


Quelque Chose de Nouveau

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Chance Meetings, Fluff, M/M, Paris (City), Post-Break Up, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-03-08 23:18:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 67,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18904690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: Ed is trying to stay positive after his first-ever vacation throws him some curveballs.  He was not expecting help to come in the form of an obnoxiously hot Frenchman.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Happy 5/20, friendorinos!  This was extremely loosely inspired by the Berlin song "The Metro", even though hardly any of it takes place on the Metro. I tried to write one like this several years ago and didn't get anywhere because it was _a ridiculous idea_ , so of course the only solution was to give it another shot. :'|
> 
> Hell, though, it's 5/20; and it's French Roy; and between this and "Winging It", I'm clearly going for a planes, trains, and automobiles fanfic merit badge.  Stay tuned for an AU where they meet on, like, a Greyhound bus or something, APPARENTLY. XD
> 
> Also, I had every intention of having this be short, and of getting it done in time to beg a native French speaker to make sure I didn't mess anything up too bad. It's been almost ten solid years since I either set foot in Paris or was called upon to speak anything other than the deliberately bad French we do around the house… so if you're fluent, and you spot anything particularly egregious, please drop me a line so I can fix it! ;A;
> 
> P.S. I can promise you that I'm going to finish this one, but I don't have a timeline just yet, because it did that thing they do where it completely got away from me. The funny part is that I was almost surprised. XD
> 
> P.P.S. [FANIME](https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxq4xZOHobq/)!! Say hi if you're going! I'm weird but nice. XDD

Ed is stewing.  It’s a bad idea for a variety of reasons—among them, that he doesn’t even really like stew; and that it won’t solve anything; and that at the mathematical rate he’s been going, he won’t have another vacation until he’s fifty, so he shouldn’t let anything ruin this one.

He tries for a couple minutes to pay attention to something else.  He’s made it through the vast majority of this ungodly three-hour train ride from Marseille—where Al’s impressing the fancy French pants off of all of his university hosts—to Paris without much incident other than the occasional lapse into stewiness, but he can feel that the jet-lag and the sleep deprivation and the _Al_ deprivation are all starting to get the better of him.

He manages to convince his idiot-asshole brain to be content with looking out the window for another five minutes, but then it starts to wander to other windows, and to the time they took Andy’s truck to Tahoe just for a day—which was as much time as Ed felt comfortable sparing from time in lab right about then—and when they got back from mucking around aimlessly in the snow, the windows were all fogged.  Andy had pulled his glove off and reached up and used his fingertip to draw a little heart in the condensation, and Ed’s had dropped right through him and hit the _ground_ , and after that he’d been more or less completely fucked.

Stupid.  Anybody could draw anything they wanted—on a window, on a canvas, on another person’s skin.  It didn’t mean anything.  It didn’t even have to be true.

The scenery moves by so swiftly in this ridiculously fast train that amusing himself by approximating their velocity based on the estimated size of a building on the horizon helps for a second, but when that gets boring, he tries to make himself focus on the people in this train car with him.  Unfortunately, they’re the same people they’ve been since nine this morning, because there aren’t any stops.

The two kids on the opposite end of the car have, to their credit, been remarkably quiet this entire time.  About ten minutes into the trip, they’d started whining, but then their mom had whipped out a monumental backpack crammed full of coloring books and little puzzles and so many snacks that Ed had half-considered going over and introducing himself, the better to beg for a little bag of fruit gummies in exchange for hanging out with her kids for a while.  He likes kids.  They usually like him back, because he doesn’t try to feed them any bullshit.

They’re less interesting when they’re quiet, though, and he doesn’t want to look like a weirdo who stares at other people’s children, so he checks on the soldier instead.

Ed had—embarrassingly, he will be the first to admit—done a double-take when one of the hottest fucking guys he’d ever laid eyes on strolled onto the train, dressed head-to-toe in orangey-brown fatigues and looking like the most attractive death warmed over that Ed could have dreamed of.

Worse yet, the gorgeous son of a bitch had had the audacity to select a set of seats two rows down from Ed’s, and then to collapse onto one of the ones that faced in Ed’s direction—at which point he almost immediately went to sleep with his head resting on the pile he’d made from his matching camouflage duffel bag and backpack.  He looked marginally less dead once he was snoozing.  He didn’t snore.  He was _damn_ fine.

Ed had been struck with a deep thrum of searing-hot guilt for a long second when he’d first started watching out of the corner of his eye.  Then he’d remembered that he didn’t have a boyfriend anymore, so he could surreptitiously ogle any fucking guy he _wanted_ , and he didn’t have to feel bad about it at all.

The guy isn’t snoozing anymore now, though: he draws Ed’s gaze back to him by stretching both arms over his head until his spine cracks—audibly, even over the intense ambient noise of the train.  Then he stands up in the aisle and stretches again; then he knuckles at his eyes with one hand while he keeps the other braced on the back of one of the train seats; and then he stumbles off down the aisle towards the far end of the car, presumably in search of the bathroom or something.  Ed wouldn’t wish train bathrooms on anyone.  Especially not someone with such a nice ass.

He tries looking out the window again, but this part of the countryside looks identical to the part he stared out at before, and he just…

Needs to get a grip.  He’s on a great trip—for the first time ever, when you really think about it—and even despite this whole Andy debacle, as far as a net of positives over negatives, he’s still having a great time.  That’s the part he needs to pay attention to.  Nobody likes a whiner.  He’s already a workaholic and a weirdo and a nerd and an introvert and just generally sort of a freak; he can’t afford to add another big no-no to the list.  Honestly, it’s a miracle he ever had a boyfriend in the first place, and pretty shocking that it took this long for Andy to realize his mistake.

He knows Al would probably hit him around the head for thinking that, but he can’t help it if it feels _true_.  He’s never been any good with people the way that Al is; all he’s good at is science—experiments and data and papers.  Hypothesizing, probing, extracting results.  That shit’s easy.  People are impossible.

Except if you’re Al, obviously, since Al’s good at both.  At least that extends to him, he supposes; that’s another blessing that he needs to sit his ass down and count.  That one counts for five blessings, really.  So maybe he should just spend the last half-hour or so of this train ride thinking exclusively about Al.

Tactical error: thinking about Al makes him glum again about the fact that Al was supposed to be here right now, and even though it probably won’t be long before he catches up, Ed’s facing at least three days without him after an entire _semester_ of Al-less-ness.  The whole point of coming here was to get to see him, and here he is, bereft of his brother for another stretch.

He busted his ass for this, too—to pay for the ticket; to cram this trip in between two big phases of his project so that he wouldn’t feel like a shitheel leaving lab for two weeks.  Two weeks is practically forever in research-time.  And for once, for _once_ , it all timed out beautifully—he scrounged up just enough from the side-jobs and night work gigs and extra teaching and hoarding pennies every which way he could manage to pay for his flight and the train tickets and have enough left over for the hotel that they were going to pick out when they got in today.  He’s pretty sure he even scraped up enough to take Al to a really nice dinner or two.  He was looking forward to that.

Well, the upshot is that if he stays someplace way cheaper than he ever would if he had Al with him, he’ll have more money for buying Al ice cream when Al _does_ get here, and that’s the important thing.

Fuck.

Ice cream.

That was his and stupid Andy’s first stupid date—the first stupid date of Ed’s stupid life.  He got twelve toppings at Coldstone just to see if they’d let him, and then tried to backpedal when he realized that Andy was getting ready to pay; and then when he said “But I’m the moron who thinks gummi bears and coconut flakes and cinnamon and sprinkles together aren’t going to make me want to throw up, so I should pay for it literally as well as figuratively,” Andy started laughing so helplessly that he had to lean on the counter, and the girl who was working actually snorted aloud, and…

And Ed already misses him like _hell_ , and it’s not—logical.  It doesn’t matter if it’s fair; he’s learned his lesson about fair; but it doesn’t make _sense_.

What did he do wrong?

What _changed_?

It doesn’t make sense for relationships to have half-lives, and they just sort of disintegrate into nothing while you have your back turned.  People aren’t radioactive (mostly).  They don’t just—it _couldn’t_ just—

It couldn’t have been entropy alone.  He and Al have never drifted apart; he and Winry always pick up exactly where they left off and start shooting spitballs at each other across the room again or whatever, and…

But it can’t be that simple.

Because if it is—if things just _fail_ , sometimes, without any sort of an explanation—then Ed is done with it.  What the hell is the point?

To his credit—sort of—Andy tried to provide an explanation in the email that he sent the other day, which he had helpfully titled _I think we should break up._ right in the subject line.  Less to his credit, when Al had immediately gone to stalk him on Facebook in a fiery retributive rage, there were already pictures of him getting kind of cozy with some other dude at a party.  Al had only relented on promises to murder him in a variety of grisly and creative ways when they confirmed that the time stamp on the email preceded the time on the clock in the backgrounds of the party pictures.  Ed still isn’t sure that Andy is going to get to keep his balls once Al gets back to the States, but they’ll all just have to cross that bridge when they come to it.  Ed will be hiding the sharp objects just in case.

Damn.  That does it.  Ed’s will trembles one more time—one last Herculean effort to withhold the waves of tragic sentimentality—before he unlocks his phone and goes back to read the stupid fucking email again.

Unsurprisingly, its contents haven’t changed overmuch.  Parts of it are damning, and parts are bewildering, and parts are just… sad.  Parts of it just burrow deep into the middle of his ribcage and throb until he aches all over.

He doesn’t have very many friends.  Al’s here, obviously, and they cram in as many late-night text chats as they can, but it’s not quite the same.  Winry’s at MIT, and she’s the belle of the damn ball like she always is everywhere—she makes as much time for him as she can, but she’s got her own life now, and it’s a good one, and the last thing he wants to do is to distract her from it.

He doesn’t ask for much, and he doesn’t need a lot.  But he’s starting to think—starting to wonder, after reading this shitty email so many times that he sees the ghosts and afterimages of other letters in between the lines—that maybe that’s part of the problem.

_I know you love me, or at least you did for a long time, because that’s how you do things – that’s how you live.  You don’t do anything halfway.  I still really like that about you.  But it’s hard too.  Because you’ve never been as passionate about me or us or any person I’ve ever seen except maybe Al as you are about your research.  And that’s really cool in a way.  You’re a great scientist and you’re just going to get greater.  But I don't think I’m going to wake up one morning and find out that you’re a greater boyfriend._

_I always sort of felt like an afterthought, I guess.  It weirds me out that we never fought about anything.  People always say that if you don’t fight, it means you don’t care.  I know you care, in your way.  You always did and you always do.  But I don’t know if your way is the_ right _way.  Not the right way for it to work anyway._

_I want to share stuff with you but I always feel like you’ll just say “I have to work.”  You’re always working.  And I get that that’s important to you and you have things you feel like you have to prove but when can I just be me, and you can just be you?  There’s never time.  You don’t make time.  And I couldn’t wait anymore to see if you were going to change your mind and try to find some.  I know if I said “Let’s go out and go dancing and be stupid,” you'd say “I have to be in lab tomorrow,” and I know that if I said “Let's just stay at home and watch movies all weekend,” you'd say the same thing._

_I think maybe you need people sometimes.  I think you need Al.  But you don’t need me.  And I need_ that _.  I need someone to be thinking about me all the time.  I guess that’s vain or something but it’s made it really hard.  I know in my head that I matter to you, but in my heart it hasn’t felt like it for a long, long time._

 _I probably should have said something a long time ago.  And I didn’t ever want to hurt you or anything.  I still don’t.  You meant a lot to me, and you still do, really, but it’s just not working, and it won’t work.  It can’t work.  And you being gone for a little while now has made me realize that there’s just so much more out there that I was ignoring because you were right here, and I kept trying to force it to happen.  But it’s not going to.  And there’s so much_ more _, Ed.  There’s so much stuff I still haven’t seen or tried or done or anything.  And I want to.  I want to go out and make bad choices and not be afraid that I’d come back and you’d just look at me because you know better than I do.  You always know better.  You’re too old for how old you are, and I feel tired, sometimes, just being in the same room with the weight of everything you want to accomplish and everything you already are._

_It’s just time.  And I’m sorry.  I’m really sorry.  But I think it’ll be good for you, too, in a way, you know?  I think you need space and air and a chance to explore things.  I think this has ended up a habit more than anything else, and it’s time that we broke it and moved on._

_So I’m really sorry.  I’m really sorry, and I wish you all the best.  I really do.  Take care of yourself and travel safe out there.  I guess this is goodbye._

Fucker couldn’t even say it to his face.  That’s the part that… well, it _all_ hurts a lot, but that part’s a special little knife with a fine edge and a sharply-angled point.  It’s not like Ed ever mistook this thing for the romance of the century or whatever, but he thought…

He thought it was worth more than that.  He thought _he_ was worth more than that.

Movement snags his attention, but it’s the lesser-known Marvel spinoff character the Super-Hot Soldier again, and he doesn’t want to stare, so he makes sure to look down at his phone again.

Except that the soldier doesn’t stop walking at the train seat where he left his stuff.

He comes right up to the bench opposite Ed, leaving only the plastic table in between them, and then holds out a packaged cookie, one of those little madeleine things that Al’s obsessed with, and a Lindt chocolate bar.

“ _Quelque chose de sucré pour un jour qui n’est pas si doux_?” he asks.

Ed stares up at him.

He’s even better up close.

Ed is fairly sure that this guy is trying to buy him some sweets for the sheer hell of it, which must mean he’s stewing _way_ more obviously than he thought, and also that this is the single most intense encounter of the gorgeous kind that he’s ever experienced.

There is, of course, one obvious and significant problem.

“ _Desolé_ ,” he forces out.  “ _Je ne parle pas français._ ”

Because of course _Sorry_ was the first thing Al taught him how to say, immediately followed by the ever-applicable _I don’t speak French_.  Al promised him that everybody in Paris will know enough English at least to point him in the right direction, but they’re not _in_ Paris yet, and this guy got on in Marseille just like he did, and what if—

“Ah,” desert-more-like- _dessert_ -fatigues says.  “Canadian?”

Ed continues staring, which isn’t exactly the best response, but he keeps reaching for superior choices and coming up empty-handed.  “American,” he says, hoping that won’t fuck his chances of… whatever there’s a chance of.  Do the French still hate them all on principle?  Probably Europe in general hates them more than ever for leading the charge into a worldwide political clusterfuck with such staggering panache.  “Um—from California.”  Right.  Al told him to say that.  He should’ve started with it.

“ _D’accord_ ,” Tall, Dark, and Definitely Not Diabetic says, which Ed has heard a lot in passing lately, but which did not feature on his list of critically useful phrases.  “That is… interesting.  I had thought because you began with an apologize—” Aw, _fuck_ , that’s cute.  Goddamn it all to hell.  “—and you are so quiet…”

“Jeez,” Ed says, instead of _That’s the first time anyone’s ever told me that I’m quiet in my life, so thanks or something_.  “Um—sorry.”  He attempts to gesture in a way that indicates the seats across from him rather than just making him look like someone who waves his hands around a lot.  “Do you want to sit down?”

“Thank you,” the soldier says.  He settles directly opposite Ed and then lays the items he brought out on the table like he’s trying to resell them.  Or like he’s about to cover them with cups and start a shell game.  Or like he initially grabbed them all at random and doesn’t really remember what he bought.  Ed supposes that all of those things may very well be true.  “Although I am afraid our train food is… very… bad,” he says, “you looked so—ah, how to say… _unhappy_ that I am hoping perhaps they may at least be… not making anything worse.”

Ed has to fight a very compelling urge to pinch himself.  Is he asleep?  Maybe this is a dream.  He’s read that sometimes you retain foreign languages even if you don’t understand them, so it’s perfectly possible his unconscious brain is regurgitating bits and pieces of real French.

“Are you offering to try to cheer me up with food?” he asks.

The soldier grins at him, and that…

That ain’t fair.

“Jesus,” Ed says helplessly.  Apparently he needs to install a replacement for the filter between his mouth and his brain, because this one’s busted enough to let out: “Where have you been all my life?”

Instead of getting up and walking away in a huff, though, the soldier laughs, sets his elbow on the table, sets his chin on his hand, raises his eyebrows, and _smirks_.

“I have been here,” he says.  “Rather than in America.  Which I think was a mistake.”

At least Ed’s heart waited until now to start pounding.  He really is flirting with an excruciatingly hot stranger on a train in a foreign country three days after an email breakup.  Life is fucking _weird_.

He looks down at the food on the tabletop so that he won’t just gaze into said excruciatingly hot stranger’s fascinating dark eyes and start to drool.  “Are you gonna have one of these?  I mean—you looked like you were having a pretty rough day.”

“This day is better than every one of the days before it,” the soldier says, and the softness to his voice makes Ed’s eyes dart up again in spite of all the better judgment.  As it happens, he looks up just in time to see the soldier’s face brighten exaggeratedly.  “And now this day has you, also; and there is chocolate.  How could one possibly complain?”

Ed swallows and forces a smile back.  He’s bad at flirting.  He knows he’s bad at flirting.  If you start bailing the leaky canoe before it’s even taken on much water, is there a remote chance that you might not sink to the bottom of the lake?  “Do you live in Paris?”

The soldier nods, and then he grimaces.  “But I… have not seen my flat in… a while.”  He gestures down to the uniform, and for the first time Ed is able to look at something other than his perfect fucking face or his perfect fucking shoulders for long enough to notice the little embroidered patch on his chest that reads _MUSTANG_.  “It will be… a… how do you say—adventure?”

Ed’s chest has gone all sympathetic-tight, which is a pain for all kinds of reasons.  “That’s a good way to look at it, I guess.”

Mustang nods pensively for a second before he warms up again.  “How long do you visit?”

“I have another week,” Ed says.  “My brother was supposed to come up with me—he’s studying at Aix-Marseille right now—but somebody in his research group had a family emergency, and he’s the nicest person ever, so he volunteered to stay and do the thing that they were supposed to do.”  The sympathetic-tightness has morphed into the more familiar kind that he fights with all the time—the loneliness, and the wistfulness, and then the immediate swell of guilt.  “But I’d already paid for this ticket, so he’s just gonna come up and meet me in a couple days.  I figure I’ll stay at a hostel or something.  He’s already seen a lot of the touristy stuff because he’s been traveling a little while he’s here, so maybe I’ll try to knock some of that out while I wait, so that he can I can do stuff that’s more fun for him.”

Mustang smiles at him, sort of ruefully, and then reaches down to push the cookies and the chocolate bar towards Ed’s side of the table.  “That is… an unfortunate event.  To be alone when you thought you would not.  But you will love Paris.  She will welcome you.  _Un petit peu de chocolat_?”

Ed makes a point of considering the items, and then a bigger point of eyeballing Mustang.  “What kind of Frenchman gives good food away for free?  Is there something wrong with them?”

He can’t even quantify the relief when Mustang sits back, looking comically aghast, and presses his open palm to his chest.

“ _Comme il est impoli_ ,” he says.  “I believe you now, that you are American.”

Ed has to bite his lip.  “Well—maybe you’d better eat one first, so I know they’re not poisoned.  Not by _you_ , or anything.  By the people who run the train.”

“He insults my honor,” Mustang says, shaking his head mournfully; “he insults the honor of my train—”

“You said yourself the food was bad,” Ed says.  “I’m just agreeing with you.”

“It is not as bad as missing one’s brother, I think,” Mustang says.  He reaches across, snatches up the madeleine, and tussles with the plastic packaging.  “These one should instead eat with a cup of tea in any case, so I will test for poison, if it pleases you.”

Ed knows just enough French to realize that that’s probably a sort of backwards transliteration of _S’il vous plaît_ , but it still sends a shiver rocketing right up his spine.

“So noble,” he manages to say.  “I guess you can have some of your honor back.”

“You are very generous,” Mustang says, finally getting a handhold on the plastic to peel a corner off and free his tiny yellow sorta-like-a-cake-thing.  “I do not know how your brother can stand to be apart from you.”

“Me neither,” Ed says, but his throat sort of sticks as he tries to choke down all the other words diving swiftly from the back of his head to the pit of his stomach—

_You only ever make time for Al, and science.  It’s not a normal kind of selfish but that’s still what it is, when you get right down to it.  I’ve never been important enough to you for you to try to understand what I want, to try to find time to put into things I like.  Dinner together sometimes isn’t enough.  It’s not a relationship.  It’s just people who eat together.  I could have that with anybody.  If that’s all you’re looking for, you’ll find somebody else._

Mustang’s fingers still against the plastic, and a glance up confirms the worst—he’s watching Ed’s expression closely, and must have seen a substantial portion of what just went through Ed’s head.

“There is something else,” Mustang says, very softly, and Ed’s heart beats far too fast and far too hard.  How does he know?  Who the fuck _is_ this guy, and what right does he have going around on trains and reading people’s minds?  “I do not… it is not my right to… how do you say—is it—break in?”

“Pry,” Ed gets out.

“Ah,” Mustang says.  “I—do not wish to _pry_.”  He lays one really, really well-proportioned hand down on top of both the cookie and the chocolate bar and pushes them, gently, even closer to Ed’s edge of the table.  “Please.”

“All right, all right,” Ed says, and he draws the cookie over towards himself.  Do they call them ‘biscuits’ here, too?  He thinks he saw that on a sign in a pastry shop in Marseille someplace, but he can’t remember.  It’s chocolate chip, which is the superlative flavor; and he thinks something sort of soft and chewy sounds like better consolation if he has to make a choice.  “It’s—I mean, it’s not, like… I guess it’s sort of a secret because Al’s the only person who knows right now, but it isn’t on purpose.”

He picks up the cookie, but he’s not sure he can feel it.  It’s like his hands belong to someone else, or they’ve detached themselves from his nervous system altogether in the hopes of escaping the rest of the train wreck that his life amounts to lately.

At least it _is_ a soft cookie.  He had a moment where he was worried it was going to be one of those thinner, crispy-style ones.  They’re just never as good.

His robot fingertips find the edge of the package and pull to split it between two of the little triangular tabs.  “My—the… person I was… dating… kinda… dumped me.  In an email.  And then, like, pretty much immediately went out with some other guy.”

He sneaks a glance at Mustang.

And then startles backwards a little, because they’re still functionally _strangers_ , and they don’t even know each other’s names, but by the combination of deep concern and unrestrained disgust in Mustang’s expression, Ed thinks that if Andy were here right now, this guy would probably put a fist right through the bridge of his nose.

“That is not right,” Mustang says, very low and very levelly.  “That is not… decent.”

“I don’t think he meant it to be shitty,” Ed says.  He now has an open cookie packet and a sliver of plastic exactly the right size for slipping away from you and ending up as litter, and not a whole lot else.  “I guess—I mean, it sounded like maybe he’d been… feeling… neglected or something.  For a really long time.  But I just—he could’ve— _said_ something.  He at least could’ve given me a chance to… I don’t know.  Try to fix it.  At least _explain_ myself.  It’s not… waiting until I was out of the country and just unloading his side of the story all at once without even letting me have a say in it is…”

Oh.  Well, so much for ambiguity and unspecific references to the gender of the individual involved.  Hopefully the fact that this Mustang guy has low-key been coming onto Ed this whole time means it’s not an issue.  It’s difficult to be sure, though, given that it might not be the kind of coming-on with any real intent behind it.  Ed’s under the impression that the French are just sort of _like_ that.

“It does not matter whether or not he meant for it to be shitty,” Mustang says, and the touch of iron in his voice makes Ed glance up again.  “In the end, it was.  And you do not have to forgive him.”

Ed can feel his heartbeat distinctly in his throat for a long couple of seconds.  It’s sort of uncanny.  He doesn’t like it.

The unsettlement is part of what makes him blurt out the stupidest possible thing to say at a moment like this:

“Do you want to help me get revenge?”

Mustang blinks twice, looking bewildered.  And also looking like a million bucks.  Or a million Euros.  Whatever’s worth more given the exchange rate today.

And then Mustang _grins_ —part giddy, part wolfish, part delighted, and devastating all the way through.

“ _Absolument_ ,” he says.  “Most certainly.  Yes.”

Ed can’t believe he just said that.

He can’t believe he even _thought_ that.

He sure as hell can’t believe it worked.

“Great,” he says.  “Um—do you have a couple hours this afternoon or tonight or something?  I was thinking—I mean, maybe we can just take a bunch of stupid selfies in front of major landmarks or something, and I’ll, um—I’ll say you’re my… new boyfriend.”

Holy fucking shit, that just emerged from his mouth as recognizable words, and now they are _free_ , and they’ll never be erasable.

Instead of recoiling in horror and then standing up and making a beeline for the exit door, Mustang sits back against the train seat, folds his arms across his chest, and smirks.

“Perfect,” he says.

Ed’s heart skitters in the best way.

“Okay,” he says, which is a half-step above the _Holy shit, wow, uh, really?_ that almost came out instead.  “Um—do you—have any plans today?  I’m pretty much wide open except for finding a place to stay at some point.”

Mustang gestures with extremely elegant vagueness towards his matchy-camo bags a few rows back.  “I need to stop by my flat, but it is… the location is very convenient.  We could take the Métro—” The way he rolls that _R_ makes it feel like he’s licking Ed’s vertebrae, and which is simultaneously colossally uncomfortable and utterly fucking _great_.  “—and it would only be a few moments.  Then we would be able to walk to many of the sights, if you wished.”

“Awesome,” Ed says.  “This is—hell.  I guess maybe I was overdue for some good luck or something.”

“I think perhaps for both of us,” Mustang says.  He pauses, and then he extends his right hand across the table.  Ed puts down the stupid cookie packaging he’s been fussing with uselessly this whole time in order to shake.  Roy’s grip is firm and warm, and he doesn’t overdo it with trying to squeeze the life out of Ed’s hand or anything, but Ed can _feel_ the strength in his fingers.  “Roy Mustang.”

Ed tries to swallow hard enough to still the frenetic banging of his heart.  “Ed Elric.  Nice to meet you.  Officially, anyway.”

Mustang—Roy Mustang—smiles at him again, which does not at all alleviate the heart-banging problem.  Suffice to say that Ed wouldn’t mind having some other banging problems where this guy is concerned.  “ _Enchanté_ , as we say.”

Ed bites the inside of his lip, but it’s too late to stop a little bit of hot blood from rushing to his cheeks.  “You guys say a lot of weird stuff.”

“French is the most beautiful language on Earth,” Roy says, smile tilting until it splits into a grin.  “One must only learn first how to maneuver one’s tongue around it.”

Ed has always heard that the European Union is a lot safer than the States, but one major failing in their precautions has become glaringly evident: they need to put warning labels on hot French men.  Big, huge, neon fucking orangesigns.  _Flirt at Your Own Risk_ or something.

But they don’t.

And as a result of this tragic negligence, Ed is going to _die_.

“I’m a pragmatist,” Ed gets out, by way of some small-scale miracle.  “French has got way, way too many letters that you don’t pronounce.  It’s linguistically inefficient.”

Roy’s grin has taken on a distinct note of a wince now.  “Perhaps I should revise the plan to tour some of the art museums.”

“Is it historical art?” Ed asks.  “That stuff’s interesting.  But if it’s just sorta splatter-of-paint stuff, I’ll probably be an asshole about it.”

“At least you are honest,” Roy says.  “Well—many have a bit of both.  We shall see.”

They both turn to glance out the window as the train slows, and the city thickens around them.  Ed’s heart is still beating double-time—here he is, swanning into an unfamiliar place in the company of an unfamiliar person.  But it’s better to _have_ the company, isn’t it?  It’s better to have a guide through an urban wilderness where he can’t speak the language, and he hasn’t even plotted a destination on the map.

They’ll see about that, too, he supposes.  And they’ll find out very soon.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, guys!  Sorry for the slow update; I was quite predictably #rekt after Fanime. ;A; And because I apparently hate myself, I then proceeded to go to another con yesterday and get even more #rekt.
> 
> But we're back now! And I recently got an ad for Vimeo on my AO3-linked email, _but entirely in French_ , which I'm guessing was because this title was in my inbox so many times. And that's because you guys are super, super generous with your time and super, super kind with your comments, so I hope you all pat yourselves on the back (en français). ♥ 
> 
> Will try to get Loud & Clear updated sometime this week, but I've got a bunch of crap going on at work, so it may not be humanly possible until next weekend. ;__;

The Gare de Lyon is huge, and it’s bustling so intensely that it makes Ed’s head spin a bit.  He’s already grateful to have Roy strolling calmly alongside, head held high like he owns the place—which Ed is pretty sure he doesn’t, but that seems to be sort of a French thing, too.

They pop down into attached Métro station without ever having to leave the building, and Roy even helps Ed buy a damn ticket, which is… good, actually, because their machine appears to be specifically designed to confuse American visitors who show up believing that they’re clever.

Roy steers them onto the appropriate train car.  After having had both of their respective asses parked on a different train for the last few hours, neither of them particularly wants to sit for the first couple minutes, but as time wears on, they each give up and pick a seat to sprawl across.  The car’s not especially busy, which probably counts as small-scale miracle number two.  Roy himself, and the fact that he seems to be _interested in what Ed has to say_ , is a much larger miracle, so that one’s getting tallied on a completely different list.

They breeze through about half an hour on the softly-rattling (and sometimes not-so-softly-rattling) subway, arguing amicably about the degree to which romantic comedies are damaging to society on the whole.  In retrospect, that probably helps to guarantee the whole not-especially-busy car thing, since anybody who speaks English has probably ducked out at the first stop and bailed into another car to avoid having to listen to them anymore.

In the end, though, when they climb the stairs up out of the George V station, Ed gets his first blinking-in-the-sun glimpse of the City of Lights.

There are a lot more trees than he expected.  They’re on a huge, wide street lined with what look like extremely fancy shops and the sorts of restaurants that he can’t afford to go to—or so he thinks until he turns to stare open-mouthed in the other direction and absolutely, undeniably spots a McDonald’s.

He’s not so far away from home after all.

In case he needed the reminder though, past the familiar golden arches is a significantly bigger arch—one that he would recognize from the history books even if it hadn’t been plastered in every tour guide and coded into every singe travel recommendation site.

“This is the Champs-Élysées,” Roy says.  “We should come back here.  Very… picturesque.”

“Arc de Triomphe selfie is a requirement,” Ed says.  “Andy will _cry_.”

In the nick of time, he manages not to add _It’s his damn turn_.

“Excellent,” Roy says.

Roy gives him a couple seconds to stumble in a full circle staring up and around himself.  If the faintly amused little smile that Ed spots is any indication, Roy probably wouldn’t begrudge him several more seconds of awestruck gazing if he wanted them, but Ed doesn’t intend to waste either of their time standing around gawping at high-end fashion chain stores, even if they are laid out more beautifully than he ever could have imagined.

“Okay,” he says.  “So—where to?”

“This way,” Roy says, and he leads them off onto one of the cross-streets, which houses yet more majestic pale stone buildings built in sharp, striking geometric shapes.  “It is… not so very far, but do you need help to carry—?”

All Ed has is an overstuffed backpack and a little duffel bag, which makes for a load almost identical to the one Roy’s got.  Ed tries to imply as much with a raised eyebrow.  “I’m good.  Do _you_?”

Roy laughs warmly and waves his hands.  “I try only to be a good host!  Perhaps you are carrying rocks; I do not know.  You may be a rock collector.  Another reason we should not go to museums—you might steal their rocks for your own.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Ed says.  The bastard’s cheating; Ed wants to look at everything at once, which makes keeping up with the rhythm of the banter even more difficult.  “If they’ve got good rocks at the Louvre, you’d better call and tell ’em to hide those bad boys before we get there.”

“It is just my luck,” Roy says.  “I meet a gorgeous stranger on the train, and he is an international rock thief.”

“I live to disappoint,” Ed says, but it comes out a tiny bit too bitter, with a chokingly acrid aftertaste.  “Um—how big _is_ Paris?  Do you know?”

“Wait,” Roy says. 

Ed has just enough time to blink a bit before Roy has turned to walk backwards—but with smooth, even, practiced strides, staying steadily ahead of Ed’s regular forward-facing walking pace.  He plasters on a slightly strained, overly sunny smile and then pantomimes putting one hand on an object on his belt and raising something else to his mouth to speak into it.  The speech in question emerges slow, even, meticulously articulated, and _extremely_ rehearsed. 

“Overall,” Roy intones, “the city of Paris is approximately one hundred and five square kilometers in area—which is a total of forty-one square miles.  It is home to just over two million individuals, but the Île-de-France region, which encompasses the city of Paris and several other surrounding areas, has twelve million inhabitants.  Over twenty million people visit Paris every year, including you lucky travelers.”

Ed isn’t sure whether to cringe or applaud as Roy mimes putting the microphone away, so he does a bit of both.

Roy falls immediately back into step with him and says, as Ed had begun to expect, “I worked at a tour office partial time while I was at university.”

“Did you like it?” Ed asks.

“No,” Roy says.

“That was sort of what I figured,” Ed says.  “What did you do in school?”

“Dream about how to get better jobs than the one at the tour office,” Roy says.  “When I had time left over, sometimes I studied chemistry.”

“Sometimes is a start,” Ed says.  “How’d it go?”

“I got a better job afterwards,” Roy says.  “I did research at a very small pharmaceutical company trying to make affordable products.  It folded.  So I did research some more at a different one with a similar goal.  It also folded.  So I tried to do research at a large company that did not particularly care about its customers, or its employees, or much of anything except for their margin of profit, and after two years of misery, they closed my division.”  He gestures up and down himself to indicate the fatigues.  “I made a… dramatic… career change.  I felt I had very little left to lose.”

“Jeez,” Ed says, because he can’t think of much of anything else to say.  “Was it better than the tour thing?”

“No,” Roy says.

“ _Jeez_ ,” Ed says.  “Well—sorry.”

Roy shrugs, half-smiling.  “Life is a series of accidents.  One can only ever hope the current leads somewhere better than the place one first departed.  Are you a chemist?”

“Sort of,” Ed says.  “Biochemistry.  And a little bit of a lot of other things.  I’m working on training immune systems to do stuff they don’t do normally, without destroying any of the stuff they normally do.  It’s fun when it doesn’t make me want to throw the super-expensive centrifuge across the room.”

Roy smiles a little wider.  “I remember that feeling very well.”

Ed really, really likes looking at his face from the side.  And from the front.  But he just noticed that the side profile is distractingly nice, too.  Seems pointless to have so many big-name museums around here when they could just have Roy Mustang stand on a dais, and people could pay to gaze up at him all day long.  “You ever figure out how to deal with it?”

“Not precisely,” Roy says.  “I did attempt drawing very small centrifuges on a paper and pulling the paper into smaller pieces and crushing up those and throwing _them_ across the room.”

“Did that help?” Ed asks.

“No,” Roy says.

“Damn,” Ed says.  “I’ll have to figure out something else.”

“Clearly you are very intelligent,” Roy says—blithely, at that; like it’s the simplest, most obvious thing in the world.  The way Al says _Oh, that flaming orb slowly irradiating us all?  Yeah, that's the sun.  We’ve normalized it_.  “I am confident you will come up with something.”

“That makes one of us,” Ed says.  “So—sorry if this is… I dunno.  Too personal.  But—what’s next?”

Roy draws in a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

“I do not know,” he says.  “I am not sure… what I want.  If there is anything.”  He tilts his head back and closes his eyes for a second, which is the sort of thing that only people who don’t routinely trip on the cracks in the sidewalk would risk doing.  “I have been thinking, but this may not be the best moment for me to make a decision of that… magnitude.  No?  And I think, too, that… something will come.  Something will change.  I do not mind so much having to wait for it.”

Ed looks at him for a second, and then at the sky, since maybe the answer’s been there all along, and Ed’s just been too busy watching his feet, trying to make sure the sidewalk sections didn’t nip his toes.

“That’s a really zen way of looking at it,” he says.  “I like the idea, but I’ve just… never been able to live that way.”

“Mostly I have not either,” Roy says.  “Mostly I have done a lot of running and very little reflection.  But still I am here, unconnected from all of the things I thought were a foundation, and so… the only logical choice now is to change.  No?  If the prior experiment, for all of its careful consideration, has completely failed, then…”

“Then you’re definitely not gonna be able to publish this part,” Ed says.  “I’m not sure where that goes in the metaphor, but—”

Roy laughs.  It almost makes Ed shiver how much he fucking enjoys the sound of that after barely more than an hour in this guy’s company.  “I think the metaphor perhaps grew some legs and escaped from us.  Fortunately, it is not very much longer.”

Because Ed is and always has been a little shit—wait, no; not-especially-little, _obviously_ —he can’t quite stop himself from saying, “The metaphor’s legs, or the distance?”

“Both,” Roy says.  “Here it is.”

‘It’ is yet another one of the very impressive, over-the-top historic-looking white buildings.  If it wasn’t for the scaffolding on every other church or cathedral or major monument around here—or for the giant glass skyscrapers that tend to edge their way into the city centers; or for the tiny European cars with their hilarious little beepy horns—Ed would almost believe that they’d warped back in time.  Parts of it still look like Napoleon just waltzed through reorganizing the whole place last week.

Roy fishes a key out of his pocket and lets them in through a wrought iron gate, and then opens the front door of the building with a different key.  It occurs to Ed—very, _very_ belatedly—that Roy never specifically invited Ed to saunter on up into his actual, honest-to-fuck home.

“Oh,” Ed manages.  “Uh—I could—wait down here, if you want.”

“Hm?” Roy says, which is even cuter than some of the oddly-constructed sentences and French-accent-distorted letters.  He glances over his shoulder absently as he does it, too, and then proceeds to hold the door open for Ed.  “No, no.  Unless you would prefer, of course.  The only problem is that I will need to apologize profusely for the… how do you say—state of it.  I have been away for six months, and my mother wrote me that she came by and opened the windows once or twice, but…” He pushes the elevator button, and his eyes track up the doors to the incredibly old-school needle display showing its progression between the floors.  “I am only hoping that she did not lie to me about ensuring that the power and the hot water will work again.  I asked very nicely, but she is so busy, and she was called away on a business emergency, but I am hoping…”

“Jeez,” Ed says.  Apparently it’s his favorite word today.  Do the French have an equivalent?  _Le jeeze_.  It ought to have more useless vowels in it.  “It’s really too bad she couldn’t be here.  It just… It—really sucks that you have to come home all alone after six whole months.  I’m sorry.”

Roy turns to smile at him, eyebrows arching.  “But I am not alone.  You see?  The ‘no idea what to do, so I will just let the happenings guide me’ strategy is already paying off.”

“You say that now,” Ed says.  “Wait until you get to know me a little better.”

He realizes—too late, way too late—that even saying something like that is _super_ presumptuous.  Roy doesn’t owe him the time of day, let alone time _out_ of the day, let alone enough time to get anything like well-acquainted.

“Mm,” Roy says idly.  “I have a… feeling.  A good feeling.  Some days, that is enough.”

Ed stares at him stupidly, but at least he only gets a couple seconds to do it before the elevator dings.

“Up we go,” Roy says, and then they do.

Ed skin has started crawling a bit with the trepidation by the time they make it up to the eighteenth floor, and then all the way down to the end of the hall.  Whatever Roy says, he can’t help thinking that he’s imposing to a degree that his mother would be ashamed of; on top of which he can’t shake this huge, heavy, sympathetic _ache_ at the thought that Roy was about to come back from a six-month army deployment to an empty apartment and absolute silence.  It’s fucking sad.  The second-to-last thing Ed wants to do is to invite himself anywhere else or any deeper into the life of someone who’s still a total stranger, but the _last_ -last thing he wants to do is to abandon Roy to the caliber of misery that he knows he’d be feeling if he was the one in those combat boots.

“ _Voici_ ,” Roy says as he lets them in, slipping inside to hold the door open for Ed to follow.  “Please—come in.  Forgive the… everything.  Forgive all of it.  It is not very big or very… impressive, I am afraid, but it has some advantages.”

“It’s nice,” Ed says before his eyes have even adjusted to the dark, because it’s not that he’s an _asshole_ —or at least not most of the time—so much as that he tends to stumble on accident over all of the invisible-rope boundary lines that people draw around themselves and never explain.  With stuff like this, the polite response is obvious.  Stuff like this he can handle.  “You should see my closet of a place at school.”

Roy flicks the light switch, and a borderline-gaudy little glass chandelier over the center of the largest space glows yellow.  Ed tries to take it all in as quickly as he can, without looking like he’s judging—because he’s not, or he’s not intending to; he’s just _curious_.

The first thing he notices, because he’s trained himself to wrap his brain around the basics initially so that he doesn’t lose people on his circuitous route to the details, is that Roy wasn’t kidding about the fact that it’s small.  Calling it a studio would probably be generous, though he supposes it could be a whole lot worse—there’s a distinctly beige kitchenette area partitioned off by a counter at chest height, and what appears to be an entire wall of closet and/or cabinet space against the hallway side probably saves the place as far as storage is concerned.

The second thing Ed notices, because apparently he’s a thirsty, dissolute little monster at the best of times, is that Roy’s bed is _huge_ , and it looks like it’s more comfortable than you always wanted clouds to be when you were a kid.  Roy shoved a couch up against the foot of it and mounted a modestly-sized flat-screen TV on the back of the kitchen counter, such that functionally his living room exists in the five-foot gap between the foot of the bed and the kitchen.  There’s a door in the wall off to the right side of the head of the bed, which likely leads to the bathroom, although Ed doesn’t expect much from it given the square footage of the rest of the place.

For all that it’s cramped and slightly antiquated, though, Ed has to admit that it _is_ pretty cute.  The walls are a sort of rosy-creamy color, with intricate crown molding near the ceiling, and there’s another, more elegant little chandelier in the kitchen area.  The curtains over its several windows are sort of a floaty-sheer white fabric, with lace at the bottom edge, and there are fancy little wrought-iron details on the wall in the kitchen to hang utensils from.

Ed can only imagine how cute the place would be if all of the furniture wasn’t mummified in dusty plastic, and all of the plants weren’t dead.

“ _Merde_ ,” Roy says, which is one of the words in French that Ed definitely knows.  He sets his bags down and then crosses over to the largest pot, which is currently inhabited by a withered stalk of decomposing brown used-to-be-plant, with one long, shriveled leaf still dangling forlornly.  “Alas, poor Yorick.”

“You named your plant Yorick?” Ed says.  “That makes it sound like you expected this to happen.”

“I did,” Roy says.  “This was not my first deployment, although it was the last.”  He starts to sigh and then pauses.  “Oh, dear.”  Before Ed can ask, he’s picking up a little folded note from next to the plant pot and turning it towards Ed.  All that there is on it is a little doodle of a sad face.  “My mother’s sense of humor is… unique.”

“Please tell me you didn’t name the other plants after dead Shakespeare characters, too,” Ed says.

“Of course not,” Roy says.  “Although I will most definitely do that for the next cadre, since it is a brilliant idea, and I wish I had thought of it.”

“Damn,” Ed says.  “I need to learn to keep my mouth shut.”

“ _Au contraire_ ,” Roy says, making a quick circuit to confirm that all of the other foliage is just as dead as Yorick, “I have enjoyed everything you have said with it so far.”

That sounds an awful lot like the kind of compliment so sincere that it borders on sappiness, which makes Ed’s cheeks heat, which makes his stomach churn, because this is just—for fun.  Right?  This is just two people sticking together for a couple of hours because neither of them has anybody else right now.  It doesn’t mean anything.  It’s not serious.  It’s not for keeps.

“Hm,” Roy says.  “Let me see…” A twist of the faucet in the kitchen makes the water run, which at least is a plus; Roy holds two fingers under the stream for several seconds and then smiles slightly, which probably means the water heater is working, too.  Ed just sort of stands there, holding the handles of his duffel bag and feeling like a lost kid who really should have figured out how to field awkward situations by now, until Roy comes back and reaches for the sheet of plastic shrouding the couch.  “I am afraid this may bring up some dust.”

As solemnly as he can, Ed raises a hand and holds his nose.  “Ready.”

Roy’s grin makes the corners of his eyes crinkle up, and then he whips the plastic cover off with all of the flair—and none of the finesse—of a stage magician.

As promised, dust scatters _everywhere_.

Since Ed’s holding his nose, he doesn’t choke on it too much, but Roy ends up sneezing into his sleeve so vigorously that it almost sends him stumbling, and then he looks up with such an utterly picture-perfect _I don’t know what I expected_ expression that Ed can’t help snickering a bit.

“Well,” Roy says.  He hurls the plastic into a pile onto the floor, slightly more vindictively than necessary, before gesturing to the couch.  “Please make yourself at home.  I have been thinking—is it all right with you if I take a shower?  I will be quick.  I am feeling the… jet-lag, do you say?”

Ed is thinking about Roy luxuriating under a steaming stream of water, which is not helping his listening comprehension, his blood pressure, or… anything, really.  “Uh—that’s—fine by me.  Sure.  Of course.”

“Excellent,” Roy says.  He darts over to the fridge and returns with a small slip of paper that was held to the door with a magnet in the shape of a poodle.  “This is the password for the internet, if you would like.  If you can keep the pornographic downloads to a minimum, however, I would appreciate it very much.”

“Aw, _damn_ ,” Ed says, trying not to blush his way straight out of existence as he takes the paper.  Well—not-very-straight out of existence, but the point stands.  “How’d you know about my evil master plan?”

Roy taps a fingertip against his temple, looking remarkably smug.

Then he pauses.  “Ah.  Another thing—would you like to have something to drink?  I’m afraid the only choices that I can offer you are… water of the faucet and… it is possible I have some tea.”

“Nah,” Ed says, hoping desperately now that Roy takes short showers, because he’s gradually progressing towards the brink of ravening hunger, but he doesn’t figure that anything in Roy’s fridge has kept for six months, and he doesn’t want to be rude.  “I’m good.  Thanks.”

Roy smiles at him again.  Roy really needs to stop doing that.  It’s dangerous for them both.  “Wonderful.  I shall be as swift as I am able.”

Ed’s not sure if “Cool” is an especially appropriate response to that, but it’s the only one he can come up with, and it doesn’t seem to bother Roy overmuch.  Roy proceeds to make a fairly quick rummage through one of the half-hidden closets on the wall, which has shelves in it, and turns up some clothes.  He shakes them out, holds them up, pulls a face, shrugs, and then bundles them up and absconds towards the bathroom.

It occurs to Ed that it is, on every measurable scale that matters, utterly ridiculous that this is happening.  He has never been lucky in his life—at least not with anything other than Al.  He’s always concluded that he used up all of his entire lifetime’s worth of positive coincidence by landing the best brother in the entire world, and that he’d just never have any more to cash in ever again, and that’s why most of the things in his life succumb to entropy and inevitably go wrong.  But this…

This is impossible.

There’s really only one rational explanation, which is that Roy is an _extremely_ forward-thinking, long-term-planning serial killer who inexplicably selected Ed as his mark.  This whole situation makes sense if Roy is reeling him in with the specific intention of murdering him in the middle of the night and throwing his body into the Seine.

Well, that settles it.  Ed will keep an eye out for weapons, never let Roy walk behind him, and bail at the first sign of ambiguous dialogue that could be intended as foreshadowing.  At least he can relax now, rather than spending every second expecting to wake up and discover that he’s sleepwalked to the far end of the train and tried to pry one of the doors open or something.

The wifi password is evidently _unververtdansuneverreverte_ , which manages to be both completely meaningless and extremely annoying, since Ed has to sit there and double-check every single letter as he thumbs them one-by-one into his phone.  He doesn’t want to take his laptop out—even if Roy _is_ the type of serial killer who takes a really long shower, it would be sort of disrespectful to assume as much when he said he’d make it quick.  Just because he’s a serial killer doesn’t mean that he’s a liar, and Ed doesn’t want to hold them up if Roy’s telling the truth, and they jet on out the door immediately after he emerges from the steamy room, clean shirt clinging to his damp skin, tossing his hair back and…

And Ed _hates_ people who swoon over hot serial killers and romanticize them in TV shows and shit.  Is there any chance Roy’s not actually a _killer_?  Maybe he’s just a serial YouTube troll or something.  Or he does a podcast version of ‘Punk’d’—that one makes sense.  He could just be recording all of their conversations with his phone in his pocket, or he could be miced up somewhere Ed can’t see, and then he just edits things into a particularly amusing sequence of _Haha, you really thought I was flirting with the likes of_ you _?  What a joke!_ , and his audience eats up the schadenfreude like jam on toast.

Perfect.  Now Ed can lust over him without any guilt.  Regular assholes are on a totally different level of the off-limits scale than serial killers, and touring major Parisian landmarks with them involves a much lower risk of ending up as a bloated corpse in the river.  All around, this is an improvement.

…it is possible that between the jet-lag and the travel anxiety and the sheer ecstatic excitement of seeing Al again this week, Ed has not gotten quite enough sleep over the course of the past week to be at full logical capacity.

Before he can fall too deep into his Twitter feed, though, he gets a text message—from Al, as if blessedly summoned by the recent thoughts.

_Did you get in okay?_ Al asks.   _Do you know where you’re staying??  I have a couple minutes while this gel runs so I can help you look up places if you want!_

The fact that Ed could, at this precise moment, weep openly about the sheer, simple fact of Al’s inherent goodness is probably another point in favor of the insufficient sleep theory.

_Uh,_ Ed writes.   _Okay, don’t freak out but I met a guy on the train who’s a soldier who just got back from being deployed (super, super fucking hot btw like 11/10 and it’s distracting as HELL) and he’s going to show me around a little bit because I accidentally told him about andy and he wants to help me get revenge.  Looking at it typed out it sounds really bad but he seems ok and if he stops seeming ok i’m gonna run.  Make sure you get some lunch while you’re working ok?_

Not sending it won’t make any of what he wrote less true, and Al has demonstrated that he can smell when his brother is lying from across the Atlantic Ocean plus the continental United States, so there’s no way he’d miss it from the other side of France.

Ed only has to wait a couple of seconds before the little ellipsis bubble resolves itself into a rather telling:

_BROTHER!!!!!!_

Because Ed is unconscionable and does not deserve his one good thing, he writes back, _Yeah that’s me!!_

Al is clearly not overly impressed, as he ignores that and writes back _I CAN’T LEAVE YOU ALONE FOR FIVE MINUTES!!!!_

Ed’s torn between wincing and grinning in triumph, since both feel sort of valid.  _I mean five minutes is probably ok but apparently three hours was too much._

Al, in classical Al style, responds, _EDWARD ELRIC IF YOU DIE BEFORE I GET THERE I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!!_

Ed sends him back a curated selection of emoji hearts.  Then he writes, _It’s fine don’t worry about it I’ve totally got it under control_.

Al is still neither impressed nor convinced, based on the _YOU SAY THAT EVERY TIME AND USUALLY SOMETHING ENDS UP ON FIRE_ that he gets in response.

_Ok,_ Ed writes, _but “usually” is not the same thing as “always” and it’s not like I’m gonna SLEEP here or something_.

…well.  Probably not.  That sounds weird and a little bit unsettling.  Trusting someone not to slit your throat in the first five minutes you’re bumming around their apartment while they’re in the shower requires a much lower level of faith in their human decency than passing out in their bedroom and hoping for the best.

_YOU HAD BETTER NOT OR I AM GOING TO SEND THE FRENCH POLICE AFTER YOU oh speaking of which, you should let me know where you do end up staying.  And this guy’s name.  Just in case._

Ed has to bite down on his lip and roll his eyes just to endure this.   _Al oh my god I have been surviving on my own for MONTHS while you were all the way over here, I can handle one guy who probably isn’t even the kind to cut me up in pieces and keep me in the oven for weeks or whatever it is you’re thinking of._

Al writes back _Why did you jump to that??  Was he eyeing your limbs and then the appliances????  You just said he came back from deployment, implying he is a soldier, implying that he is probably relatively big and buff and while I know you are very ‘lean and scrappy’ or whatever you’d like to call it this week he would have the element of surprise and you can’t possibly have spent the five months I’ve been here practicing hanging out at strangers’ houses like this or you WOULD ALREADY BE DEAD AND IN THE OVEN._

Sometimes Ed wonders where his life went wrong.  Sometimes he simultaneously wonders where it went right.  Sometimes he gets a headache.

_Al please calm down_ , he writes.   _Please please please pretty please with sugar on top and a maraschino cherry and the good ghirardelli chocolate sauce.  I’m ok!  I will handle it!  I will not do anything you wouldn’t do!  I long-distance pinky swear!!  His name is Roy Mustang and we’re near the Charles V metro station although I don’t know the exact address.  I’ll do that thing on the google map app where I can send you the pin where I am and it’ll move with me._

_Oh that’ll help_ , Al writes back instantly.  The typing bubble bobs for a second before it fills with another pearl of wisdom: _Then as soon as he dumps your body in the river, as long as your phone’s still in your pocket, I’ll realize something’s probably up._

Ed does not want to think too much about why they both made the mental leap specifically to bodies getting dumped in the river.  There’s probably some unexplored trauma there, and now is definitely not the time to unpack it.

_Could you please relax??_ he writes back.   _I can take care of myself, I promise!  I was taking care of both of us for a long time, don’t forget, and neither of us died.  Nobody ended up in the oven.  I mean it was sort of touch and go in places, sure, but I also learned a lot from that.  If I die I do not want to die in Paris anyway, I want to die somewhere cooler and less cute._

_I’m glad you think it’s cute,_ Al writes.   _I feel the same way.  All right.  I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt even though you’re the WORST brother EVER (I don’t really mean that but I’m still mad at you) and not take the train up there right this second to kick your sorry tushie, but can you text me every couple of hours and let me know that you’re ok??_

Ed sends him a flood of little hearts, followed by _Yes you absolute mother hen_ , in response to which he predictably receives a comparable tidal wave of hearts, followed by a sizable brood of chicken emojis.

He is… slightly exhausted after that conversation, to tell the truth.  Fortunately, Roy’s couch is pretty comfortable even if it’s also pretty dusty, so sinking into it and tilting his head back and closing his eyes feels great.

He definitely, certainly, categorically does not doze off or anything.  Anyone who says otherwise on the basis of the way he startles when the bathroom door opens simply doesn’t understand the concept of resting.  Which is what he was doing.  Not sleeping.  Nope.

He has a second where he doubts it himself, though, given that Roy looks like a walking wet dream.

Ed wasn’t paying much attention to the clothes when Roy selected them, which was evidently a grave mistake—if he’d noticed the particulars of the choices, there’s a chance he could have prepared himself for their impact.

Too late now.  All he can do is sit very, very still, like a prey animal hoping not to register in the predator’s field of vision, and stare at the unreasonably hot hunk of Frenchman who has now crammed himself into tight dark-wash jeans and an equally tight white T-shirt, with a very fitted pale yellow Oxford shirt left open over the top.  Roy is rolling up the sleeves.  This is not a drill.  Roy’s hair is still wet, and he keeps having to pause to scoop it back out of his face.  His shoulders are the ninth wonder of the world, his shirt _is_ fucking clinging to his collarbones, and Ed is fucking doomed.

“I have been thinking,” Roy says, and Ed manages not to say _Me, too, about licking your neck_.  “It seems to me that it would be more convincing if we had… if we took some spare clothes along with us when we go out.  We could use different clothes in each picture, and then it would not be possible to know when they had been taken, or how many days it had been.”  He opens a door in the cabinet-wall again, revealing another closet, and takes out a sport coat jacket.  He bats his hand against the front for a second and then shoulders it on, tugs the lapels, and holds both arms out.  “You see?”

Ed doesn’t think he can see anything other than his own imminent destruction, but he says “That’s a great idea” anyway.

He forces himself to swallow, then forces himself to look in the direction of the plastic-swaddled television so that his brain will stop seething with the flow of impure thoughts.  “And—um—I mean, if I posted stuff to, like, Instagram or something, instead of Facebook, he’d have no way of knowing for _sure_ if I’d even seen his pictures, so he’d just have to sit there and wonder whether I was retaliating, or if it was a coincidence.”  He cringes.  “Is that way too mean?  That sounds so shitty out loud.  I’m—I don’t normally—”

“I think that is _perfect_ ,” Roy says, and the slight purr under his voice snaps Ed’s eyes right back to him.  Shit.  “He is the one who declared the war.  Can we be blamed for deciding we are going to win it?”

“Yes,” Ed says.

Roy gives him a Look.

Ed fidgets.  “Well—I mean, it’s not—I don’t want to be— _cruel_ or anything; I just…”

“We can take a large number of photos,” Roy says.  “That doesn’t mean you have to use them all.  You can wait to consider how you feel, and then you can choose.”

Ed can’t exactly say _That_ _won’t help, though, because you’re_ so _much hotter than him and the other guy he suddenly got with put together that anything I post will slap him in the face, and I just don’t know if he deserves it_ , so instead he says, “Okay” and leaves it at that.

Roy opens another closet and retrieves a light-colored canvas backpack, and then he starts folding up jackets and other shirts and cramming them inside.  “Would you like to go now?  Perhaps we should have something to eat before we undertake any strenuous tourism.”  He pauses, grimaces— “Ah.  Hell.  I will need to buy groceries.  Well—it can wait until after we have undertaken all of the strenuous tourism you desire.”

Ed pries his eyes away from the tantalizing angle of Roy’s back and the absolutely mouth-watering curve of his ass and fixes them on the TV again.  The TV is safe.  “You mind if I use your restroom first?”

“But of course,” Roy says, gesturing towards the doorway as he contemplates another pastel shirt that looks a lot like all of the others.  “My home is yours.”

That’s a dangerous proposition made worse by the neat, cute little bathroom—it’s even smaller than Ed expected as far as square footage goes, but they crammed in one of those combination bathtub-showers, and there are lacy curtains on the tiny window here, too.  The mirror above the sink has an intricate gold frame around it, and Roy decorates with a finesse for detail that Ed’s only ever seen with Al—though Roy’s tastes seem to tend more delicate… right up until the plant on the windowsill, which met a demise every bit as unfortunate as all of the others.  Maybe after they buy groceries, they can go to a nursery and recruit some livelier flora.

Ed realizes that he really shouldn’t be inviting himself on all of Roy’s personal errands, even just in his head.  He’s not staying here.  He couldn’t bear the imposition even if Roy asked him to, and hostels are… fine.  Right?  He’s sure they’re fine.  He hasn’t really had to brave one yet, because he went straight to Al’s place after he landed here, but he’s heard about them, and they sound… survivable, and…

And he’s really, really damn hungry, so he needs to stop equivocating and swooning over Roy’s stupid décor so that they can go get lunch.

“Let me just grab a couple of my shirts,” he says when he reemerges.  “Although I probably shouldn’t get too many, or Andy’ll call bullshit, because I rewear my clothes sometimes even when I’m _not_ traveling.”

“That is sensible,” Roy says, which is weird, because he should have just said _Gross_.  Doesn’t this guy know anything?  “I have remembered the most important thing about this flat, which forgives many of its flaws.”

“I think it’s nice,” Ed says, and he means it.  Clearly Roy’s never tried to find rental properties in the Bay Area.

“It is nicer,” Roy says, waving Ed over to join him by the biggest window, which is the one on the wall adjacent to the bed, “when you see this.”

He draws the curtain back.

The cutesy wrought-iron window frame perfectly outlines a stunning, gorgeous, dead-on view—sniped between two other buildings on the block—of the fucking Eiffel Tower.

“Oh,” Ed says.  “Holy shit.”

“Yes,” Roy says.  “Holy shit.”

“You get to wake up to that?” Ed asks, entirely unnecessarily.  He should not be casting a glance back at the bed, which looks even more appetizing now that Roy has pulled all of the plastic off of it.  “Jeez.  You can get groceries delivered, you know.  I can’t believe anybody ever gets you to leave.”

“Just now,” Roy says, squeezing past Ed to start towards the door before Ed can muster up the wit to move, “the person who is getting me to leave is you.  Shall we?”

Ed savors one last long look.  He probably won’t get another one, although he supposes he’ll have to come back at least for a minute to collect his other bag.  Maybe he can snag a parting glance.  “Guess we should.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh, wow. I'm so sorry the updates have been so sporadic! The month of June apparently decided it had a sacred duty to kick my sorry ass, and it did a pretty respectable job. o__o
> 
> But we're back now! And also, semi-related – if you're interested in possibly participating in a Roy/Ed week this year, [drop us a line before July 5](https://forms.gle/pqEoPKSVeetdfgvXA) and let us know which week(s) work for you!
> 
> P.S. I'm gonna have to raise the rating on this bad boy. I was 50/50 for a while on whether there was going to be hanky-panky, but it's looking like it's going to get pankyish around the 45K mark, so here we are. I wanted to give you guys a heads up before I put that into action, though!

The Louvre is a _lot_ more fun than Ed expected, but he suspects that it has more to do with the company than with the art.

They make the mandatory stop at the Mona Lisa, because—according to Roy—Ed “must see how small it is to the eye, and yet how much influence”.  That sounds more significant than it has any right to be, but Ed doesn’t have time to parse it before they’re following the signs.  They took one quick, hilarious, upward-facing under-the-chin deliberately-shitty selfie while they were on the escalator underneath the giant glass pyramid thing, but Roy stops them just inside the entrance to the Mona Lisa room and motions for Ed to take out his phone again.  Then Roy holds up one hand, extends two fingers, and pinches them in around the frame of the portrait to make one of those silly little perspective tricks.  Immediately after Ed follows suit with his free hand and then gets the shot, Roy whirls around on his heel, straightens his shoulders, and does a _devastatingly_ dead-on impression of the painting’s so-called ‘enigmatic’ half-smile expression, so obviously Ed snaps that one, too.

And Ed… likes him.  Ed likes him a lot more than is safe for either of them, and probably for anybody else in this city, either.

They then proceed to wander around one of the most famous museums in the world, taking pictures of themselves interacting ridiculously with classic high art, and Ed…

Ed knows it’s a side effect.  Ed knows it’s in his head; knows it’s all the mixed emotions bubbling into some sort of terrible primordial toxic waste—

Ed _knows_ this doesn’t mean anything to Roy Mustang, and it shouldn’t mean anything to him.

But it’s nice.

It’s just so nice, and Roy’s so funny, and he doesn’t make a fuss when Ed insists on buying them mediocre sandwiches from a kiosk out in the museum courtyard when they belatedly remember that they’re both ravenous.  They sit on a little bench together, too close together and not nearly close enough, and Roy licks crumbs off of his fingertips and pages through a museum guide and says, “How do you feel regarding statues of Greek persons who have misplaced their arms?”

“You say ‘misplaced’ like they’re gonna turn up under the rug or something,” Ed says.  “Or they fell behind a bookshelf.  Like, ‘Honey, have you seen my arm?  I swear I just had it.’”

“They must have _once_ had arms,” Roy says.  “I am sure they only put them down for just a moment, and then when they turned around, the limb had just—” He lifts his right hand and snaps his fingers.  “— _pff_.  Gone.”

Ed doesn’t know why he has the impulse to shiver.  Apparently it’s a good thing, though, because in the momentary brain-pause as he tries to get a hold of himself, he realizes that wandering through the Greco-Roman galleries would mean staring intently at a number of very nude statues, many of them male, with Roy standing right next to him, hair not quite dry from the recent shower.  Proceeding through several Louvre-sized rooms while determinedly not adding those pieces together to end up imagining Roy as naked as possible sounds like the first challenge of Ed’s life that his willpower might not be up to.

“Uh,” he says.  “I dunno.  I’ve not sure I want to risk it if the arm-losing is contagious.  How about some of the Egyptian stuff instead?”

“There is one you must see,” Roy says.  “Even at risk of arm-loss disease.  After that, anything you like.”

Ed eyes him.  “Why?  What’s so special about that one?”

“You will like it,” Roy says.  “Everyone does.  You will be glad that you have seen it, afterward.”

“Are you some sort of psychic, or what?” Ed says.  “I don’t believe in that stuff.”

“Nor do I believe it,” Roy says.  “But what I do believe is that it is possible to read people as if they are books, and the further you read, the more you can know.  But one can also guess quite a lot from the back cover and the first page.  And I guess that you will like to have seen the Victory.”

Ed opens his mouth to say _Is Victory super naked?_ and then shuts it again.

He’s a grown-up.  He can do this.  He can handle _art_ , for fuck’s sake.

The sake of fucking is, he supposes, sort of the problem, but he can handle that, too.  At least for:

“You get five minutes,” he says.

Roy flashes him another one of those too-bright smiles.  “That will most certainly do.”

  


* * *

  


The second-worst part is that they end up spending more than five minutes, and the worst part is that it’s because Roy is right.

Ed’s trying to figure out how to avoid telling him that without actually lying, because real untruths wriggle their way into the center of his chest and sort of writhe there for a while, and it’s supremely uncomfortable.

Setting aside the fact that she has losing-arms disease _and_ losing-head disease, however, there is something about the Winged Victory of Samothrace that kindles a small, warm, gentle flame behind Ed’s sternum, which feeds his whole body from there on out.

It’s always fascinating, too, with the really intense sculptures—the way the artists somehow figured out how to emulate the drape and flow and texture of fabric with _marble_ ; how they very nearly managed to transform the stone into something else entirely.  Ed can’t fathom how you’d go about doing that, but it’s sure worth staring at in wonder.

And it… helps.  It helps to look at one of the world’s most beautiful blocks of stone, artfully lit in the center of a pedestal, and feel something like a prickle on his shoulder-blades where wings would be.  Victory moves fearlessly forward, against the wind.  He can, too, can’t he?

No one can stop him.

Let them _try_.

Roy nudges at his arm very gently with one elbow, smiling at him yet again.  “What do you think?”

“I think you get a pretty good reading-comprehension score,” Ed says.  “And I don’t give out good grades easy.”

“When things are not easy to attain,” Roy says, gazing up at the marble-feathered wings, “they are much more… how do you say?  Satisfying.”

Is it getting a little warm in this extremely large gallery room, or is it just Ed?

“Yeah,” he says.  “Hey, uh—I was promised Egyptian artifacts.”

“Ah,” Roy says.  “But of course.  I believe it is right this way.”

  


* * *

  


The Egyptian rooms are mind-blowing for all of the reasons that Ed had hoped—first and foremost, the fact that Ancient Egypt spanned more time than the Common Era in its entirety, which is a historical head trip in the _best_ possible way.  Seeing in real time that bits and pieces of it held up for literally millennia, in sufficiently stable condition to go on display in countries that hadn’t even been a glimmer in the geography’s eye when those objects were created, is some sweet brain-busting icing on that cake.  Ed could probably stay here, peering at little tiny remnants of the lives of people who woke up in the morning and chatted with their neighbors and complained about the cats several thousand years ago, until he starved.

Fortunately, it doesn’t come to that, because Roy coaxes him out into a garden, and then over to a plaza area with a little Ferris Wheel, and there’s a gelato stand.  Roy says “My treat,” and Ed says, “Not a chance,” and Roy says, “You are very stubborn,” but he only smiles beatifically when Ed wrestles his wallet out to pay.  No argument.  No guilt-tripping.  No pointed sighs.

Jesus, is this what it’s always like when you go on a date with an adult?

Well—not that it’s a date.  They take the requisite heads-together, gelato-cups-lifted selfie as if it was one, but it’s… not.  It’s definitely not; and it’s not, by definition, because of what it is instead.

Which is a crying goddamn shame, as it happens, because Roy does such unholy things with his tongue and the teeny plastic gelato spoon that Ed can’t decide if this is a very special hell or an extremely targeted purgatory.  Maybe he’s floating somewhere in the ether in between.  Maybe he’s still asleep on that train.

At least the dream-gelato is, as the poets say, baller as fuck.

“Shit,” Ed says, trying to focus on licking the last of the melting gooey goodness off of his own spoon.  “What time is it?  Did we just spoil dinner?”

“Surely you have heard the expression,” Roy says.  “‘Life is uncertain; eat dessert first’?”

“It’s been embargoed at my place,” Ed says.  “Al always crumples up a ball of paper and throws it at my head when I say that, so he’s trained me out of it.”

“Very Pavlovian,” Roy says.

“Oh, that reminds me,” Ed says.  “I gotta tell him you haven’t murdered me yet.  Hey, hang on—” He holds his phone up, turns on the selfie camera, and makes sure to put up the peace sign.  Roy adjusts his sunglasses in his hair and beams winsomely.

“You should make sure to mention that my criminal record is very clean,” Roy says as Ed taps into his text messages to send it.  “And that I had very good grades in school.  One of those things is true.”

“You’re not helping,” Ed says.  What he ends up writing is _Still alive!  Planning to stay that way!  We went to the Louvre and made fun of the Mona Lisa_.

That’s a slight exaggeration, given that they sort of gently poked fun in a non-malicious manner, but he has an extremely clear mental image of Al rolling his eyes, and that’s the most important thing.

“Tell him I am very helpful,” Roy says.  “Tell him I am the most helpful Frenchman you have ever met.  How many Frenchmen have you met?”

“Like, three,” Ed says.  “Unless you count the guy at the really good crêpe place near Al’s apartment.  He and I were saying ‘Hi’ by the time I left.  That’d be four.  Including you.”

“I am part of an elite group,” Roy says.  “Am I the most helpful of the four?”

“You’re okay,” Ed says.  “The crêpe guy was _really_ cool.”

Roy mimes being shot in the heart—or possibly stabbed.  The pantomime is a little bit fuzzy, but there’s definitely some morbid bodily injury involved.

Ed’s phone vibrates before he can grind any salt into the wound.  Al has texted back: _Oh good Lord he’s hot enough to counteract all of your not-inconsiderable intelligence._

Ed tilts his phone screen so that Roy won’t be able to see it and answers, _I know right_

Al sends back a bunch of extremely distressed emojis, and then _STAY SAFE AND TRY TO BE AS SMART AS POSSIBLE, DARN IT!!!!!!_

Ed sends back several different-colored hearts and a cat and then shoves his phone into his pocket again.

“We were talking about dinner,” he says.

“So we were,” Roy says.  “It is only just past five, and you consumed your gelato so quickly that I would dare to guess that you may still have some hunger left.”

Ed eyes him.  “I might.  Maybe.  If you give me, like, half an hour.”

“We can give you more than that,” Roy says.  “And we can take a walk first to… work on an appetite.”

“Work up,” Ed says before he can stop himself.  Correcting people who are speaking a second language out loud and doing a pretty fucking amazing job is a crappy thing to do in and of itself, on top of which English idioms are an absolute shitshow at the best of times.

Roy doesn’t seem particularly offended, though, because he just grins again and taps the arm of his sunglasses to drop them back down onto his nose.

“That, too,” he says.

  


* * *

  


They walk all the way back up to the Arc de Triomphe.  Ed’s map app says it’s around two miles, but his heart thinks it has to be a whole lot shorter, because it vanishes in the blink of an eye as they saunter along in the fading heat, ribbing each other and talking science and discussing which of the many, many trees and plants and shrubbery-things on the route look most likely to assault a person with allergies.  Roy has a much more charitable view of plants than Ed does, which may be part of the reason that he tries—unsuccessfully, apparently, but trying counts—to foster so many of them in his living space.

Walking up along the Champs-Elysées again—but as a straight shot this time, from much further down, with the arch on the horizon and the sun sinking gradually and the shop windows slowly lighting up on either side—is the sort of experience that imprints itself into the surface of your brain.  It’s simple and beautiful and gently… reassuring.  Every once in a great while, Ed gets a moment like this—a small, quiet instant or two where he feels like he’s in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, and he’s breathing in sync with the universe.

“Wow,” Ed hears himself saying, which is a little bit… what?  Naïve?  Silly?  Too late.

He can’t help it: the clouds are staining the sky dark pink and seeping purple as the sun sinks almost directly behind the white arch, and the streetlamps burn like fireflies flanking the roadway, and the trees—and the flowerboxes—and the windows sparking in the last of the light—and the rooftops—and the slightly-stifling heat—

He turns to glance at Roy, and that makes it all significantly worse, because Roy looks like more than a million Euros this time: he looks like the value of the entire monetary holdings of the most exalted of the Swiss banks, and he tilts his head and smiles as Ed’s gaze settles on him, and…

“Don’t move,” Ed says.  He snags his phone, raises it, steadies both feet on the pavement, lines up the shot, and takes it.

“ _Oh, là là_ ,” Roy says, the absolute bastard.  “I feel like a fashion model.  I should have a scarf, no?  So I can toss it over my shoulder?”

Like he needs the help.

“This can be your picture to use on dating sites,” Ed says, showing it to him.  “ _I like long walks along the Champs-Elysées and eating unhealthy food without it ever sticking to me and being smug all the time, and I’m good at all three of them_.  Do they have Tinder out here?   _Le Tindre_?”

Roy smiles faintly at the photo, eyebrow arching a little higher at Ed’s bulletproof new business model.  “I… do not know.  I do not tend to trust these things to give me the same impression I would find face-to-face.”

Ed snatches his phone back and plays offended, although the stupid skitter of his heartbeat doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo that this is meant to be melodramatic for fun.  “Is that your way of saying you wouldn’t’ve wanted to fake-date me if you only saw me online?  You wouldn’t have swiped right?”

Roy blinks at him.  “Do they… are mirrors outlawed, in California?”

Ed blinks at him.  “Huh?”

Roy stares back for a second, and then he laughs, faintly, and looks away, running a hand up over his face.  “Ah.  I was… I attempt to give you a compliment.”

Ed blinks again.  It doesn’t help, but sometimes the third time’s the charm, right?  “Y—whoa, back up.”

“No second chances for unfortunate pick-up lines,” Roy says, pushing both hands into his pockets and sauntering off towards the arch again.  “They either fly, or they fail, and that is the end of it.  Have you found your appetite once more?  What would you like to be eating?”

Ed can’t think of anything to say that isn’t filthy as all hell.  At least Roy didn’t say _What would you like to be tasting?_   That would’ve been worse.

“Uh,” he says.  “I… dunno.  What’s good?  Wait, scratch that—what’s good that I can _afford_?”

“Mm,” Roy says.  “This area is not quite as difficult as it would appear.  They do cater to the tourists, also, of course.  What sort of food do you like?”

“Everything,” Ed says.  “I just like food.  But my wallet doesn’t like that I just like food, so I gotta be a little bit careful if I want to be able to pay my rent every month.”

“Hmm,” Roy says, which is even worse than _Mm_ , because it’s longer, and lower, and the way it resonates in his throat makes Ed’s knees feel like putty for a second.  “How is this: I will make a selection, and you can either approve it, or say it is crap.”

“Jesus,” Ed says.  “How do you know me so well already?”

Roy’s thin smile doesn’t make for much of an answer.

  


* * *

  


Stranger even than how easy and comfortable it’s already become to walk side-by-side with the stupidly hot Parisian who’s been leading the way is how easy and comfortable it is settling down at a little outdoor table with cutesy wrought-iron chairs.  The French bistro that Roy picked passed the food-items-that-look-edible test, followed by the price-that-won’t-put-Ed-instantaneously-in-the-poorhouse test, both of which are critically necessary.  It’s a good thing that Al taught Ed how to recognize a couple French words for stuff he likes to eat.

“Okay,” he says once they’re seated, scanning down the menu and squinting at some of the words that are both unfamiliar and crammed full of useless vowels.  “One other thing—don’t order escargot.”

The way Roy has splayed himself out across his chair instead of sitting like a normal person—he sprawled in it almost sideways, one arm extended over the back, the other draped on the arm of the chair, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle—is bad enough.  The lazy grin he adds to it at Ed’s comment is just fucking _unfair_.  “They are… not the sort of thing one often finds a craving for.  But they are also not so terrible as they sound.”

“I mean,” Ed says, “if you douse anything in enough butter, it’s probably edible, but they always make me think of schistosomiasis.”

The laughter glimmering in Roy’s eyes as the last of the light fades makes everything even worse.  Ed may not survive until Al gets here.  What the _hell_?

“I think I can perhaps control myself,” Roy says.  “Is there anything else that is off-limits?”

“Uh,” Ed says, looking over the lines of semi-comprehensible text again.  “If they’ve got frog legs, it’d be great if those weren’t on the table, either.”

Roy shifts just enough to put an elbow on the table and then rest his chin on his hand, which brings him closer, puts the too-fucking-perfect lines of his face directly in the path of the softening sunlight, and makes Ed’s stomach tighten up.  “Are there subtropical parasitic frog diseases also?”

“I dunno,” Ed says.  “Probably.  But in this case, it’s more that frogs are really cute.”

Roy actually laughs outright at that one.  “It is very awful, that so many delicious animals are—no?”

“Yes,” Ed says.  “Al tried to go vegetarian a couple years ago, but he’s sort of anemic to start with, so he kept passing out, even though he was taking a ton of vitamins and stuff, so his doctor and I made him go back to eating meat.  He cried for, like, an entire day and then decided he was just going to deal with it.”

Roy grimaces.  Even that looks good on him.  _Fuck_ this guy, in every sense of the word.  “That… at times, I suppose that is the only way to cope with one’s life.”

“Yeah,” Ed says.  “Although he’s also sort of good at crying.  He’s one of those people who cries like somebody on TV most of the time, and it’s sort of… like, delicate.  And kind of cute.  Although with the whole vegetarian thing, there was definitely some snot involved that wasn’t particularly pretty.”

Roy wrinkles his nose, and Ed thinks he’s going to say something about Ed bringing up snot so soon after discussing escargot, but instead— “I am not sure if it will become relevant, but I feel perhaps I should warn you that I am not a… I do not know how to cry and make it cute.”

“Me neither,” Ed says, fussing with his silverware in the vain hopes of distracting himself from the reality of this conversation.  “My whole face gets red; my eyes get all puffy; snot everywhere; my hair usually gets in it—it’s a _mess_.”

“With this,” Roy says, “and with so many other things… I think the mess is part of being human.”

Ed chances a glance up at him, but that half-smile is fucking dangerous.

Maybe that’s Ed’s problem—he’s a greater part mess than any of the rest of it.  He’s too much mess to leave room for any of the other things that a life is meant to consist of, and who could blame anyone who gives up trying to even out the proportions by force?  He’s dogmatic even when he doesn’t mean to be; he knows that much.  It’s not really that he thinks his perspective is always best, or anything; it’s not a matter of hard-headedness for its own sake; it’s just that he’s used to approaching problems in a certain way, and that’s what’s comfortable, and usually it works with a bit of jimmying and jury-rigging and punching at brick walls, so that’s what feels safest.  That’s what feels right.  And trying to train himself to leap blindly off of cliffs because other people say there’s a net at the bottom that he can’t see—

Well.  They were talking about snot.

“So,” Ed says.  “I… shit.  I should’ve asked you this before we even got off the train.  What _was_ the first thing you wanted to do when you got back home, before my dumb ass crashed your plans and started dragging you around the whole damn city?”

“Hardly dragging, I think,” Roy says.  “I believe you would find me more difficult to drag than you might expect.”

Roy’s not the only one who’s read a lot of people-books: Ed’s never found the language easy; half the time he has to sit there and ruminate and run over the same sentence again and again and come up with multiple potential explanations—but he _does_ it.  He does it because it matters, and because people act on the expectation that he understands them better than he does, which means he has to work harder to tease all their thoughts and motives out from the observable evidence and figure things out backwards.

It’s tough.  But it means that he’s worked his way further along the implications than Roy probably anticipates.  It means that he’s gotten the sense that under all the suavity and charm, Roy Mustang has a will like tempered iron when something is important to him.

That’s good, though—it’s good to know more than people realize you do.  It’s good to have a little bit of an edge in your back pocket.  You never know when there’s going to be a knife fight.

“In any case,” Roy is saying, as if he didn’t casually drop that fragment of information at all, “I… suppose I had not thought about it much.  Or at least not very much past ‘hot shower’, which was my primary objective.”  He flashes a grin.  The streetlamps kiss his cheekbones; Ed’s jealous.  “One which we accomplished handily—no?”

Apparently, once Ed is done with this whole grad school gig, he needs to write a book listing all of the English words that are safe to use when sitting across from a frazzled, needy, rebound-ready American with a more-than-slightly dirty mind.

_Handily_ will not be one of them.

“Yeah,” Ed says.  “Guess so.”

He’s spared from additional desperate attempts to pry his attention away from Roy’s knuckles and fingertips by the arrival of a waiter, who speaks rapidly in French before registering that Ed is cringing.

Roy says something to the waiter and then turns to Ed with another one of those disastrous smiles.  “Would you like anything to drink?”

“You mean regular drinks?” Ed says.  “Or booze?”

“Both,” Roy says.  “Although perhaps not quite at once, since one’s mouth tends to have difficulty with that.”

“Just water sounds great,” Ed says.  “Thank you.  Uh—is it—” Pop quizzes are bad enough in your native language.  “ _Un peu d’eau, s’il vous plaît_?”

“ _Très bien_ ,” Roy says, although Ed has no idea if that’s genuine or just meant to make him feel better about his mediocre French.  “Are you sure I cannot tempt you with a glass of wine?  We are the slightest, smallest bit famous for the wine, in France.”

“I’m a grad student,” Ed says.  “I only drink stuff that’s free.  I’m good.  Thanks, though.”

Besides—this is good, in a low-key conniving sort of way.  If Roy’s got a little bit of liquor in him, and Ed doesn’t, if it _does_ turn out to be a murder thing, Ed will have a balance and agility advantage, and…

And he really hopes Roy’s not a serial killer.  Or even a one-time killer.  The plant-killer thing is obviously already said and done, but maybe this doesn’t have to end in dismemberment, right?  Maybe it’ll work out to be a good story for Ed to tell Winry later about his flash-in-the-pan French romance, whether or not he has to embellish quite a bit to reach the _romance_ part.

Roy’s ordering something incomprehensible, but by the combination of his satisfied expression, the sounds of the syllables, and the context of the conversation, it’s probably the wine.  He’s just so damn _French_.

The waiter ghosts off after another little useless-letter-filled exchange, and then Roy fixes his full attention back on Ed.

That’s one of the scariest things—and one of the most addictive ones.  When Roy focuses, he is _present_ , and intent, and attentive in the extreme.  Ed’s not sure he’s ever met more than a handful of people who really, really listened when he talked.

“So,” Roy says.  “Will you like more translation of the menu?  Or may I ask you now about your research work?”

“I’m not sure you wanna do that,” Ed says.  “I’ve been told I ‘gush’.  Actually, that’s… the nicest thing I’ve been told.”

“Fortunate for you,” Roy says brightly.  “I do not know that word yet.  Gush as much as you desire.”

Fuck him.  How the hell is he making it so easy?

And, realistically speaking, making _Ed_ so easy.

Shit.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Roy/Ed Week](https://royedweek2019.tumblr.com) is up and running – we'll be doing August 12-18 this year! :D
> 
> If you need me in the meantime, I will be making as many small-scale bad decisions as humanly possible.

As they’re finishing up—and as Ed’s trying to figure out whether it’s verboten under the long-distance Law of Al to order dessert when they had gelato immediately before dinner—Roy says, “I have a question.”

Ed figures it can’t be any worse than any of his previous questions, all of which were targeted and smart and insightful, unique in their grammatical structure, utterly compelling, thoughtful, challenging, and valuable.  Ed either wants to talk research exclusively with Roy from now on or never do it again, and he’s not completely sure which one it is.  The whole experience was mind-blowing and amazing and more than a little bit exhausting.

There’s also the not-so-small detail that there are one or two other things he’d like to do with Roy that would probably fit into that triangulation of categories.  Why— _why_ —are intelligent people so fucking hot?  It hardly seems fair.  Life is tough enough.

But he says, “Okay, shoot” anyway, either because he’s polite or because he’s a masochist or because of some tragic combination of the two.

“If you are feeling that we have time for one more landmark for the night,” Roy says, “would you like to see Sacré-Coeur?  It is… especially remarkable, in the dark.”

Ed opens his mouth to agree to literally anything if Roy continues to do that sparkle-eye thing every time Ed talks about his research—and then catches himself in the nick of time and watches the clever bastard suspiciously instead.

“Doesn’t that one have a ton of stairs?” he asks.  “And how far is it?  Are you planning to walk?  Do you secretly work for some kind of ninja-fitness YouTube channel where you trick people into exercising way more than they expected to, or something?”

Roy blinks, then smiles.  “Do you imagine that would work?  I am out of a job, at the moment—if people would endure the YouTube advertisements to view such a thing, then perhaps—”

“Don’t you dare,” Ed says.  “I refuse to be your guinea pig.  And—answer the questions.”

It’s Roy’s turn to open his mouth—possibly to say something about Ed being small and fuzzy and ornery enough to classify as an lesser-known breed of guinea pig—and then shut it.  He clears his throat, straightens his shoulders, and tosses his head, which is… disastrous, really.  But at least if he doesn’t say the guinea pig thing, Ed doesn’t have to kill him.

“It is the one with stairs,” Roy says.  “A large number of them.  It is… somewhat over four kilometers from here.  I am afraid I cannot remember the conversion.”

“Don’t be,” Ed says.  “Only nerds remember that stuff.  A kilometer’s a little over half a mile, which adds up to ‘sounds like too damn far’.”

Roy grins.  “We could take the Métro.  Or a taxi, if you like.”

Ed eyes him again.  “Is that gonna cost an arm and a leg?”

“I am not sure,” Roy says.  “I usually prefer the… ninja-fitness.”

“Of course you do,” Ed says.  “Well—okay.  I guess if we split it, it probably won’t be too bad, and it’ll be more fun with the stuff we can see from a cab than it would be underground.”  He fishes out his wallet—which should hopefully also make it easier to steal the bill when their waiter comes nearby again; he learned on day one from Al that you have to flag them down in Europe a lot of the time, because they never want to rush you to pay up—and thumbs through the paper money to get an idea of what he’s working with.  He can always hit an ATM if he gets really stuck, but with the foreign transaction fees costing a moderately-sized fortune, he’s hoping to avoid that except in cases of dire emergencies.  “I mean… I _guess_ I’m supposed to be on vacation or something.”

“No ‘suppose’ required,” Roy says, leaning his chin on his hand and smiling slightly.  Is it possible that he doesn’t know what he looks like?  Is it possible that he doesn’t know what that _does_?  “You most certainly are.”

“Yeah,” Ed says.  “All right.  Taxi it is, and then ten-thousand stairs, and then the church or whatever.”

Roy sits back, attempting to convert a smothered laugh into a convincing scowl.  He isn’t particularly successful.  “‘Or whatever’, he says.  Does ‘whatever’ mean something more in California?  It seems to be very… it has so many purposes.”

“‘Whatever’ can mean whatever you want,” Ed says, which sounded a lot less stupid in his head than it does out loud.

Roy grins.  “That seems to be too much pressure to bestow upon one little word.  In any case—it is not the ‘church or whatever’ so much as the view or whatever that matters.”

Ed eyes him a little more, even though it doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect so far.  “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Roy says, and it sounds _real_ strange coming out of his way-too-capable mouth.

  


* * *

  


The cabbie lets them out as close as he can without running down any tourists, so Ed tips him pretty generously.  Dude has a tough job and no mistake.

Unfortunately, that means that they have to head up the street and around the corner on their own, so by the time Ed lays eyes on the stairs, it’s too late to turn tail and dive back into the taxi and beg him to _le floor it_.

“Holy shit,” Ed hears himself say.  “What are you, some kind of _sadist_?”

“Ah,” Roy says.  The grimace looks genuine, at least.  “It… it is several more stairs than I remembered.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ed says.  “We’re already here.  There’s probably nothing else around here that’s worth doing.  This is all part of your evil secret wellness master plan, isn’t it?”  Roy starts laughing, which is not an answer, so Ed tries again: “ _Isn’t it_?”

“But of course,” Roy manages.  “I am so very… dastardly.  Is that the word?”

“Close enough,” Ed says.  He steps back and—purely out of politeness; it has nothing whatsoever to do with wanting the chance to sneak glances at Roy’s ass as consolation for the imminent suffering—gestures to the foot of the stairs.  “After you.”

“At least,” Roy says, shoulders lifting and dropping in a soft sigh as he climbs up the first few steps, “I will quickly be punished for my own poor suggestion.”

“Yeah,” Ed says.  Godfucking _damn_ , that ass.  “At least there’s that.”

  


* * *

  


When they reach the top, Ed grabs onto the first railing he can find for keeping people out of the ivy and away from the topiaries and clings on.  At least if his knees give way now, he won’t get a concussion in the bonus round.

“You,” he pants out to Roy, “are the _worst_.”

Roy’s hand wraps around the railing just beside his—close enough that it’s got to be an accident; close enough that it’s got to be coincidence; close enough that even with the blood singing through him from the recent exertion, Ed can feel the warmth of Roy’s fingers radiating through the tiny space between.

Roy takes a deep breath before he says, “I will not be arguing with that at all.”  Then he points to their right.  “As the first part of the apology: here is your ‘church or whatever’.”

In Roy’s defense—Ed wishes he wasn’t thinking those words in the first place, but it’s too late now—the basilica has just smugly added itself to the list of architectural marvels in Europe that have taken Ed’s already vulnerable breath away.

“Wow,” he says.  “I—okay.  Holy shit.  Or… whatever.”

The whole beautiful structure is lit yellow in the night, framed by shadowy foliage in the dark, the portico and its arches dragging his eye agonizingly slowly up to the towering dome flanked by its two lesser brethren.  People _made_ that.  Somebody designed it, and a whole hell of a lot of people paid for it, and a whole hell of a lot more people built it block by block on an empty stretch of ground.

Humanity sure is amazing when it doesn’t suck.

“There is a second part of the apology,” Roy says.

“I think you’re off the hook,” Ed says.  After a couple more seconds of staring more or less open-mouthed, he manages to cast his eye over the environs, too—lots of tourists teeming up and down yet more stairs leading right up to the building; masses of them crowding at the doors.  Camera flashes everywhere; phones out and upraised like tributes to the sky.

There’s also a little kiosk with a small striped awning, which appears to be selling drinks and stuff.  Ed’s deep distaste for paying tourist-gouging prices for basic necessities immediately goes to war with the reluctant recognition that he’s _seriously_ dehydrated.

“While that is a great relief,” Roy is saying, “I think you may wish to appreciate it nonetheless.”

That’s when he reaches out.

That’s when his fingertips settle, moth-wing-soft, on Ed’s shoulder and nudge so gently that Ed almost doesn’t register the impulse to turn.

But he does.

And the whole damn city’s laid out below them—a vast, dark ocean of landmarks and livelihoods and tiny glowing lights.

Well—the lights on the Eiffel Tower and the other big tourist traps aren’t nearly as tiny as the rest of it; most of those are huge, colorful beacons so that you can plot out your time for tomorrow before you’ve even snapped your selfie up here.

“Do not move,” Roy says, and Ed thinks for a second that maybe there’s a bee on him or something.  “Only stand still, and breathe.  I will be back in moments.”

He doesn’t leave Ed time to answer, which is probably good, since Ed’s not sure he’s particularly prepared to generate coherent speech just now.

Roy’s right, too, which once again is a huge pain in the damn neck.  Standing here, intent on nothing but the silent urban spectacle and the sensation of air pulling into his lungs, feels quite a lot like magic.

In the end, he doesn’t know exactly how long the ‘moments’ last, but eventually Roy ghosts up beside him again bearing two bottles of that Orangina shit.  He holds one out to Ed.

“I am afraid the water has all been purchased,” Roy says.  “Perhaps we spent all of our luck on surviving the stairs.”

“Probably,” Ed says.  Then he kicks himself.  “Thanks.  What do I owe you?  I know they charge ridiculous amounts in places like this.  Firstborn child, or what?”

“It is the third part of the apology,” Roy says.  “Therefore it is free.”

“I already told you you’re forgiven,” Ed says.

There’s a funny flicker in Roy’s eye, but, as usual, he moves briskly along to another blithe remark before Ed can ask about it.  “Perhaps then you should keep it as collateral, in case I am in need of more forgiveness later.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Ed says, in large part just because he’s so thirsty that talking kind of hurts.  “Thank you.”

“Thank you for being here with me,” Roy says.  He uncaps his bottle and holds out the neck.  “ _À ta santé_.”

Ed knows there’s some fancy required response for that, but looking at Roy Mustang in low light, with just the slightest sheen of sweat on his forehead while his mouth curls up into another stupid enigmatic smile, tends to rob one of more than just memories.  “Sorry—what do I say to that, again?”

“ _À la tienne_ ,” Roy says.  “So long as we are friends, that is.  I hope it is all right that I spoke as if—”

“ _À la tienne_ ,” Ed says, cracking his bottle open so that he can tap the mouth of it against Roy’s.  Not the mouth he’d prefer to be touching, but… “Guess you’re stuck with me now.”

“A tragedy,” Roy says, gaze drifting back over to the incredible view as he raises his bottle and drinks.

Ed takes a swig of his, too, but despite bracing himself for what he knows it’s coming—“This stuff weirds me out.  I think I like it, but I’m not really sure.  It’s like soda and orange juice got into a fight, and nobody won.”

Ed can only hope that the way the corners of Roy’s eyes crinkle up with every grin will be imprinted on his brain forever.  He wants to be able to call that one up in the middle of the night when it’s cold, and life’s shit, and he feels impossibly alone.  He wants that one forever.

“He insults my honor,” Roy says.  “And the honor of my train, and the honor of my beverages—”

“Shut it,” Ed says.  “Oh, wait, hang on—we gotta get a picture of this one.”

By the time he’s flipped to selfie-cam, it’s too late to save himself: Roy has nestled in against Ed’s shoulder and leaned his head in to rest very lightly against Ed’s temple.  He raises the bottle and his eyebrows, and he smiles.

Bastard looks so good it hurts.

Ed tries to flash a convincing grin at the camera, snaps, and then shies away from the tantalizing heat of Roy’s body so that he can wrangle the photo into a text to Al.

“He’ll like that,” Ed says, because babbling senselessly is a good way to distract himself from how good it felt to have Roy so fucking close.  And also a good way to drown himself in shame.  “He’ll probably be shocked you were able to drag me all the way up here.  He knows how I feel about unnecessary exercise.”

He dares to glance over, and Roy is looking him up and down, one eyebrow arching again.  Ed feels blood rush to his face; Roy takes a long, slow sip of Orangina, and Ed gets fixated on the way his throat moves, which deepens the flush enough that it feels like his cheeks have started sizzling.

“What?” he says.  “There’s a difference between necessary exercise and unnecessary exercise.  Climbing ten billion stairs to see a church is _unnecessary_.”

“Ah,” Roy says.  “This is an idea that does not translate.”  He sweeps his hair back from his forehead with one hand, smearing the sweat and letting his eyes fall half-lidded for a second as he does it, which makes Ed’s stomach bottom out.  “I will keep my comments to myself, then, yes?”

Ed has retained just enough fractions of wherewithal to stop himself from saying _Are the comments about me, or the stupid thing I just said?  Because if they’re about me, and they’re good—_

“Whatever,” he manages instead.  Roy wasn’t wrong: it’s one of the most versatile words in the language, possibly second only to _Fuck_.  Nobody ever believes him when he starts on that.  “Weren’t we looking at an amazing view, or something?”

“And drinking the drink with the personality you do not appreciate,” Roy says, but the hint of a grin flitting back and forth across his face under the lights makes it clear that he’s messing around, and also turns Ed’s stomach right back into a pit of magma.

“I didn’t say _that_ ,” Ed says.  “I just said it doesn’t know what it is, and that’s weird.  I don’t like sparkling water either.”

“Perhaps it is merely confused,” Roy says.  Someone gets up from a bench that overlooks the view, and he darts over and drops down onto it, spreading one arm across the back to save a space for Ed, before anyone else can interpose themselves.  “I will have to confess that I spent quite a lot of time thinking I had to choose between… what did you say?  Being a soda, and being an orange juice?”

Ed thinks there’s about a sixty percent chance that they’re currently talking about Roy’s sexuality, but sixty is _bad_ odds.  “Uh… yeah.  What’d—I mean, what’d you… find out?”

Roy is trying very hard not to laugh as he takes another sip.  “That it is enough to be an Orangina.”

Seventy-five?

“Well,” Ed says.  “It… y’know, it sort of… grows on you.  You like it better the more you drink it.”

The slyness to Roy’s grin brings it up to eighty at least as he glances in Ed’s direction.  “Do you think so?”

“Yeah,” Ed says.  He takes a sip and tries to believe that that’s as true of stupid Orangina as it is of stupid Roy.  “Normally I’m more of a soda guy, but… it’s good.  I’m digging it.  Well—I’m drinking it, anyway.  Hey, can we see your apartment from here?”

“Hm,” Roy says, leaning forward—as if another five inches will make the difference—and squinting out into the sprawl of the city in the night.  “It should be… just about… there.”

Ed’s not even really watching where he points his finger, because the finger itself is so beautifully proportioned, and there are little scuffed-up scabs on two of the knuckles of Roy’s hand, and there’s a crescent-shaped scar on his wrist that looks like it’s cradling the meat of his thumb, and the veins that stand out in his forearm make Ed’s throat go sort of tight.

“Cool,” Ed says.

  


* * *

  


They pause on a landing of the stairs for Ed to snap another photo of them—despite the all-too-evident fact that they both look slightly harried and more than slightly sweaty and so exhausted that they’ve begun to verge on deranged—and it’s then that he also gets a text from Al.

_Very cute.  And by that I mean that you are, and he is, and have you found a place to stay yet?  Where are you staying?  TELL ME, BROTHER!!  OR I WILL… DETERMINE SOME CONSEQUENCES.  THEY WILL BE DIRE._

“Crap,” Ed says.  “I’ve been—we’ve been doing so much stuff I forgot about hostels.  Do you know any good ones near your place?  I still gotta get my stuff off your floor.”  He tries to run a hand through his hair and encounters tangles, which is more inconvenient than embarrassing at this point.  At least the record-breaking tiredness is good for something.  “Oh, shit, we still have to get you some groceries.”

Roy blinks.  “Ah.  You are right about that.  I had forgot.”  He pauses.  “Do you… if you would like to, you are very much more than welcomed to stay with me.”

Ed discovers enough new energy to summon another hot blush in the face region.  Better than other regions his blood could be going, obviously, but annoying as hell all the same.  “What?  No, I—I mean, you’ve already… you’ve gone way out of your way to—I couldn’t possibly—I mean, you’ve given me a huge-ass amazing tour for _free_.  How could… I just… couldn’t ask that of you after everything you’ve done already.  My mom’d rise from the grave and kick my ass.”

That…

…is now near the top of the list of things that he definitely shouldn’t have said, which is an impressive accolade that he’ll have to celebrate another time.

Roy smiles slightly, though—there’s an odd touch of strain to it, but somehow Ed gets the strange feeling that it’s not because Ed took dark humor to a new and unprecedented place.  That one was like the Vantablack of morbid jokes.  But if it’s not that that's bothering Roy, then—

“Of course I do not wish to put pressure,” Roy says, almost delicately.  “But it is… you would not be… I would not mind it, at all.  That is the truth.  To be more truthful, I… it would be… very nice to have someone with me.  It has been a long time since I was alone for very long.”

That is exactly the sort of thing that an enterprising and intelligently manipulative serial killer would say.

But Ed _believes_ him.

It’s not a choice, or a conclusion—it’s a gut-level, bone-deep certainty that rings right through him to the tips of his fingers and the ends of his toes, resonating in his ribcage until he just can’t deny it.  He believes it.  He _knows_.

“I—shit,” he says.  “I mean—if—you’re sure.  Hang on.”

He ducks to his phone and writes _Don’t freak out_.  It is distinctly possible that he starts altogether too many texts to Al that way.   _I might try staying with Roy?  Just for one night.  HE’S NOT A MURDERER and also his apt has lots of windows so I know I can escape if I need to.  I’ll get you the address.  He’s really decent so he’ll be cool about it.  I know he will._

He sends it.  He waits with bated breath while the screen remains still for a second, and then the little typing-ellipsis bubble pops up, and then…

_Can I talk to him on the phone?_

“Hey,” Ed says.  “Um—my brother wants to call and talk to you.  Is that okay?”

Roy has pushed his hands into his pockets and lifted his shoulders, which is the most pointedly non-threatening body language that Ed’s seen from him yet.  “Certainly.  Of course.”

“Maybe after we get to the bottom of the stairs,” Ed says, because he wouldn’t put it past Al to say something—intentionally or otherwise—that might make Roy startle, stumble, and then fall and break his gorgeous neck.  “You wanna just…?”

“That is very wise,” Roy says, which makes for the first and probably last time that someone has graced one of Ed’s ideas with that particular adjective.  Ed’s about to say so when Roy slips by him to start down the stairs again, and he grazes his hand over Ed’s shoulder feather-lightly on his way past, and all of the words assembling in Ed’s head and clambering up his throat just _die_.

Is he reading it wrong?  Is this a French thing?  Maybe it’s meant to be friendly instead of flirtatious.  Maybe Roy’s trying to be a good host; maybe he’s trying to put Ed at ease in a foreign country; maybe he’s trying to reel Ed in just close enough that Ed won’t know what it is, so he won’t leave, and then neither of them will have to be alone.  Maybe it means _something_ , but not very much.  Maybe—

Well, maybe that’s precisely why Al’s calling.  Maybe he can sense Ed’s existential crisis from the other side of France, and he’s planning to grill Roy like a thick steak until he gets to the bottom of it.

The Roy-as-a-nice-cut-of-meat comparison works a little better than is comfortable, though: looking at him makes Ed’s mouth water; getting a taste of him sounds _sublime_.

Fortunately, or perhaps the opposite, Roy wastes no time proceeding down the stairs.  Ed supposes it shouldn’t come as any kind of a surprise that heading downward is a hell of a lot faster and easier than dragging themselves all the way up, but it feels like he blinks his eyes, and they’re standing on the street again, staring at each other, waiting for the other one to move.

“Um,” Ed says.  “Okay.  Hang on.”

He ducks to his text log again and writes _Ok to call you now?_

Al immediately texts back _Yes_ —and then follows it up with a little heart, because he knows, somehow, by way of the Al Magic, that Ed’s comparable but less-cutely-shaped organ is banging in his throat at the prospect of what’s to come.  Al knows that Ed’s instinct will be to assume that Al is mad at him until he has sufficient concrete evidence to demonstrate otherwise.

The emoji helps, but Ed still takes a deep breath before he hits the button to dial Al’s number.  He lifts the phone to his ear.

“Hello?” Al says, as if his phone doesn’t tell him exactly who it is, even if the text log hadn’t done it first.

It… helps.  Hearing his voice helps everything.

“Hey, kid,” Ed says.  “I’m gonna put him on.  Be nice.”

“No promises,” Al says brightly.  “But I won’t start anything I can’t finish.  How’s that?”

“Love you, too,” Ed says.  “Here.”

One more deep breath for the road, and then he offers the phone out to Roy.

Roy smiles at him in an encouraging sort of way, and that’s so unfair that Ed doesn’t even know how or where to chart it.  What the hell is he supposed to do in a situation that can’t be plotted on a graph?

Roy raises Ed’s phone and says, “Good evening.”  He blinks in the pause, and his smile tilts slightly wry.  “Ah.  _Bien sûr_.”

The rest is, naturally, in French—which Ed’s positive was Al’s idea, to make sure that Ed can’t understand what’s being said.  It’s probably meant to be for his own good or something, but straining his ears trying to pick out a syllable here or a half-word there that sounds recognizable is nothing short of _agony_.

It’s highly possible that Al is fully-aware of that, and this is his way of gently punishing Ed for not just finding a damn hostel in the first place.

It’s not Ed’s fault that hostel sounds like ‘hostile’, and also that Roy is so hot that Ed’s brain melts like the last of the gelato every time he earns himself one of those sunspot smiles.

The conversation continues for just long enough that Ed has had to resort to biting his lip and rocking back and forth on his heels to divert a fraction of the nervous energy.  He _thinks_ it’s going well, given that Roy has stayed very calm and collected and even laughed quietly a few times, but sometimes Al puts on the Murder Voice and scares the shit out of people just for fun, and Roy seems to have a very firm grasp of his own expressions, so he could be hiding some genuine distress for Ed’s benefit.  Maybe he’s already decided that it’s not worth letting Ed hang around his place—or stay in his _life_ —if the full package involves shovel speeches from Al even when they’re only planning to cohabitate for, like, one night maximum.  Maybe he’s actually kind of pissed off that Ed even imposed this on him when he was only trying to be nice, and—

“ _Et vous aussi_ ,” Roy says.  And then: “ _Absolument.  Un moment_.”

He offers the phone back to Ed.

Ed’s been told once or twice that, unlike Roy’s, his facial expressions go from zero to extremity pretty much instantaneously, and he’s relatively sure that none of the extreme ones are very cute.  He tries at a little smile anyway, though, because… well, hell, if this is already fucked up, it can’t hurt, can it?

“Hi,” he says into the phone.

“Hi, Brother,” Al says calmly.  “To make a long story… um, to summarize: he answered all the questions exactly the way I wanted him to, but that could just mean that he’s really smart, rather than that he’s all right.”

Between the stairs and this existential minefield that he’s somehow tiptoed into on accident, Ed’s head is spinning a bit.  “Uh… okay.  So—”

“So you have my blessing,” Al says.  “Whatever that’s worth.  But be _careful_.  And text me when you get settled in, and text me in the morning, and… just keep me posted, okay?”

“’Course, Al,” Ed says.  “Um—but you—” He can’t quite say _So did he pass the probably-not-a-murderer test with a C or an A?_ when Roy’s still standing right there with a functional fluency in his language.

“I got a good vibe,” Al says.  “I know you hate that word—” Not wrong.  “—but I’m much less… concerned… than I was before I talked to him.”

“And before you looked him up online,” Ed says.

He can hear the slightly smug grin in Al’s voice.  “How’d you guess?”

“Big brother powers,” Ed says.  “Well—fine.  How are you?  How’s it going with Michel’s project and stuff?”

“Great,” Al says.  “Other than the fact that I’m stuck here, anyway.  But I’ll tell you all about that when I get there—until then, you need to go have fun without me, okay?”

“Okay,” Ed says slowly.

“But not too much fun,” Al says.

“Uh,” Ed says, slower still.  “O… kay.”

“You know what I mean,” Al says.  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do until you’re _sure_ it’s not just the rebound talking, and use protection.”

Somehow, Ed never imagined that he would die standing up with his phone held to his ear on a street corner in Paris, France.  “Al.”

“Sorry!” Al says.  “Sorry.  Sometimes you’re bad with hints.”

There needs to be an _escape_ key that allows you to quit the entire universe and go wheel around in the void of space for a while until you’ve recalibrated your brain.  “I… mean, I guess that’s fair.”

“I’m going to stop talking before I put my foot any further into my mouth,” Al says.  “Shoes taste gross.  Text me, and have a great time, okay?  Don’t forget that you’re on _vacation_.  It’s supposed to be relaxing and a little bit wasteful, and you get to be as impulsive as you want.”

“You’re giving me mixed messages,” Ed says.

“I know,” Al says, sounding legitimately pained.  “I’m scared for you and excited for you at the same time.  Just—never mind.  I love you.  I’ll talk to you soon.”

“You, too, kid,” Ed says, and then Al chirps _’Bye, Brother!_ at him a couple times, and then he’s left staring down at his phone screen in his hand, attempting to figure out what the hell just happened here.

“Your brother is very… impressive,” Roy says, perhaps the tiniest bit tentatively.  At least looking at him—albeit with a bit of skepticism while waiting to see where that start of a sentence is headed next—is significantly aesthetically superior to staring at the phone.  “He knew things about my history which I myself hardly remembered.”

“He’s good at Google-stalking people,” Ed says.  He doesn’t add _We used to try to do it for fun in the hospital to pass the time_ , because nobody needs to hear that.

“Very much so,” Roy says.  “And it is a useful skill.”

Ed eyes him for another second.  Is the extremely narrow strain of uncertainty that’s crept into Roy’s voice and expression because Al gave _him_ mixed messages, too?

Or is it because Al said something about Ed that put Roy on his guard?

“Yeah,” Ed says.  “So… did you… wanna go get groceries, I guess?  If that’s still… if it’s still cool with you if I tag along, and… stuff.”

“But of course,” Roy says, and his shoulders subtly square themselves, and his spine straightens a touch—he’s back in his element again.  What the hell does _that_ mean?  Did he think Ed had changed his mind or something?  Did that _matter_?  “Perhaps another taxi is best?”

A part of Ed wants to make a comment about how fascinating it is that money grows on trees in France, but the rest of him is preoccupied with the way that his feet are throbbing from all of the walking that they’ve already done today.

“I think you’re right,” he says.

Roy looks genuinely pleased to have garnered Ed’s agreement.

Ed’s stomach flips.

This… is going to be interesting.

  


* * *

  


Grocery shopping with someone he met this morning is every bit as surreal as Ed had been bracing himself for.  There’s something weirdly intimate about stocking somebody’s pantry in the first place—something about contributing to their home that carries a strange kind of emotional weight.  It is not casual.  It is not trivial.  It is not ordinary.

And yet here they are, comparing notes on prices—Ed can do percentage calculations in a heartbeat, whether or not he can pronounce the French names for much of anything—and carefully Tetris-ing essentials into Roy’s shopping basket.  Their hands keep colliding.  Ed wants to dissolve through the floor, and also for that to continue happening for the rest of recorded time.

Roy spends a lot of time contemplating the produce section, which gives Ed a perfect opportunity to dart off and snatch up his own little basket.  He’s figured out enough about the layout of the place to make a pretty quick circuit snagging up the things he needs.

By the time he circles back, Roy has moved on to contemplating the root vegetables, although he pauses in that endeavor to blink at Ed and gesture towards the second basket.  “What is all of this?”

“If you’re gonna let me stay with you,” Ed says, “I’m going to make you breakfast.”

Roy blinks a few more times and then smiles.  “Is that so?”

“Yeah,” Ed says.  “It’s the least I can do.  Have you ever had an American breakfast before?”

Roy’s eyes dart down to the contents of Ed’s basket and then back up.  “I… do not believe that I have.”

“Then you’re in luck,” Ed says, “because I use my mom’s pancake recipe.  For _real_ pancakes.  I mean, I love a crêpe, but—that’s not a _pancake_.”

A bit of mischief creeps into Roy’s burgeoning grin.  “Is it the assertion of superiority that makes the breakfast American?”

“Yes,” Ed says.  “Tomorrow you’re gonna be singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ after you try this stuff.”

“I am looking forward to it,” Roy says, and it sounds like he actually means it.

  


* * *

  


Like most of this weird little journey so far, unpacking the groceries and then settling down in Roy’s flat with the intention of sleeping in it is simultaneously utterly bizarre and bizarrely normal.  Is it as strangely comfortable for Roy as it is for him, or is Roy just a remarkably good actor whetting his teeth for the Cannes Film Festival or something?  Hell, if Ed was a movie bigshot, and Roy turned up on the red carpet wearing a tux and that flashbulb grin, Ed would write a film _for_ him to star in.  Make one from scratch.  Catapult him to celebrity with the first teaser trailer, which would spend a lot of time focusing on his eyes and his fingers and his collarbones.   _Damn_.

Which begs another question: is it wildly inappropriate and/or taking advantage for Ed to be crashing on the couch of someone that he _seriously_ has the hots for?  It’s not like he’s going to do anything, obviously—and he’s way too damn chicken to produce convenient opportunities for Roy to suggest some anythings, like “forgetting” his clothes after going into the shower or whatever.  He’s just here to sleep.  Tomorrow he’ll make Roy big, thick, delicious, fluffy-ass pancakes and bacon and an omelette, and then he’ll probably just… be on his merry way.

And that’s fine.  Some chance encounters are just that—bright, brilliant, staggering, and then gone.  Fireflies in the night.  Ed doesn’t mind.  He’s grateful he got to be here and have this when he needed it.

But all the same—

There’s something about it that’s… different.  Something significant; something _strong_ ; and it manifests in the little moments the most, so that you could miss it completely if you had your head turned—if your eyes weren’t open extra wide to try to memorize every last detail so that you could call this up again on a lousy night.

They collapse onto the couch once they’ve finally finagled all of the groceries into Roy’s fridge and cabinets, and after Ed’s done a quick inventory of the stuff that he’ll need tomorrow to blow Roy’s mind and palate with some brunchy goodness.  Roy proposes that they watch TV, but somehow they never even get to the point of turning it on and trying to find a program in English, because Ed says something about Europe, and Roy starts telling travel stories, and then that turns into exchanging safety-stretching lab stories, and then…

He knows it’s just the first blush of acquaintance—right?  It’s just the novelty of getting to know someone; it’s just the excitement of charting out the superficial contours of a brand-new human being.  It’s just the delight of picking a brain that processes things like yours, but slightly different, and trying to work backwards through the gears to determine how it ticks.

It’s just fun because they’re still strangers, really.  It’s just fun because there’s so much undiscovered here.  It doesn’t mean anything.  It isn’t permanent.

And that’s _all right_ , because there is an incandescent beauty to this: to having so much fun just _being_ with someone.  Just sitting on the couch at somebody else’s side.

By the time Ed surfaces from the sheer, simple joy of it, it’s _late_ —the kind of late that you can feel when you slip into a focused haze and then shake back out of it, neck aching, eyes burning, with pages of scrawled equations scattered on your desk.

And it’s only now that he realizes how close they are, and how sharply they’ve angled their bodies towards each other.  Ed’s whole torso is tilted inward and forward; he’s sitting sideways with his knees folded beside him, nearly grazing Roy’s thigh, and each of them has an arm slung over the back of the couch.

Ed’s breath sticks in his throat mid-syllable, and he chokes on the rest of what he meant to say about the reckless chemical combinations that Alyssa in biorobotics saw fit to dunk her prototypes in.  He can feel the blood rushing to his cheeks and then seeping higher, searing up straight past his cheekbones to warm his forehead, too.  At least if this keeps up, he can cook eggs on his own damn face instead of having to do it on the stove tomorrow.

Instantly, Roy picks up on the difference and subtly shifts back, putting enough distance between them this time that Ed can finally fight in the remainder of his original breath.

“Ah,” Roy says, and if Ed wasn’t quite so laser-focused, he might even miss the cautious way that Roy withdraws his arm so that their hands aren’t settled on the back of the couch with just two spare inches of separation anymore.  Even with the added space, even with Roy turning his shoulders slowly to angle his body outward instead of in and down and _dizzyingly_ near to Ed’s—they’re still so close that Ed can appreciate individual eyelashes.  They’re still so close that the fine lines and little creases at the corners of Roy’s eyes deepen visibly when he smiles; so close that Ed can count the silver hairs threaded through the black ones at his temples and creeping up along his hairline.

So close that the movement of his throat every time he swallows registers like an earthquake, particularly when he swallows hard—like now.

“Perhaps,” Roy says, “it is time we had some sleep.  It has been… a lengthy day.  No?”

“Yeah,” Ed says.  Staring at the tendons in Roy’s neck will not make that any less true.

“Well, then,” Roy says.  If he notices the way that Ed’s eyes keep lingering on his mouth and his jaw and his fingers with every motion as he stands, he’s too polite—or too embarrassed—to comment.  “We have an agenda of much excitement tomorrow as well.”

Ed’s not sure his pancakes will quite merit _that_ , but the more he says, the more likely he is to let a _God, you are so fucking sexy I kind of want to die_ slip out between other sentences.

So he just says “Okay,” and then a “Thank you” to Roy’s invitation to use the bathroom first, and then he gathers up his travel bag of toiletries and makes a break for it.

  


* * *

  


Listening to Roy sleep would be bad enough.

Listening to Roy _not_ sleep is worse.

While Ed was in the bathroom, the beautiful bastard used the opportunity to put some really soft sheets down on the couch, as well as a blanket—as if Ed’s going to need that right now, in the summer, in Paris, when his blood’s running hot as hell for the guy whose couch he’s crashing; but the gesture’s nice—and more pillows than Ed has ever owned in his life.  Ed isn’t sure he wants to know why Roy has so many spare pillows to start with, especially in a living space where storage is at a major premium.  Is it a kink thing?  Maybe it’s a kink thing.  Okay, now he totally wants to know, but he can’t exactly ask.   _Hey, glad you’re tossing and turning like a motherfucker—can I ask you something?  Yeah, so, are the pillows for a sex nest thing?  Or are they to cushion the fall for when somebody jumps your bones?  We can make sure they’re still in good condition if you want, you know._

This is Roy’s first day back in his native time-zone, so although the hell of a lot of walking they did in the heat today should really help soothe to soothe any hiccups in the circadian rhythm department, Ed figures that he’ll probably need to give it at least half an hour or so before he can reasonably expect Roy to get to sleep.

After forty-five solid minutes of Roy attempting to minimize the noise of the shifting, the sliding, the rolling, the stretching, and the muffled little sighs, Ed sits up, folds his arms on the back of the couch, and rests his chin on them.

“Hey,” he says.  “Are you okay?”

He can hear the grimace in Roy’s voice even though most of the bed is spun in shadow.  “Ah.  I am—sorry.  I hope I did not wake you.”

“Nah,” Ed says.  “Insomnia runs in the family.  But we’re talkin’ about you.”

“Partly it is the jet-lag,” Roy says.  “I… it was very foolish to have slept on the train.”

“I guess so,” Ed says.  “But you probably needed a nap.”  He adjusts his slouch against the couch back so that his shoulders won’t hate him quite as much tomorrow.  “What’s the other part?”

There’s silence for a moment—long enough that Ed’s spine tightens, and his skin prickles; long enough that he’s positive that this time, he’s overstepped his bounds.

But Roy just says softly, “You are too clever by half, I think.”

He tries to force himself to relax, but fortunately—sort of—he doesn’t get very far.

“It is… harder than I thought it would be,” Roy says.  “Coming back.  It is… enough about the city is the same, but changed also—it is easy to forget, outside.  With the noise.  With the people.  And with you.  Seeing it all brand-new again as you are seeing it; that has… that was… helping.  That was… better.”

Ed takes a breath and lets it out slow.  “How about now?”

“Now is not so good,” Roy says, and the way his voice quavers almost to the point of fracture right in the middle just—

Fuck it.   _Fuck_ it.

Ed’s up and around the end of the couch and padding over to the bedside and sitting down on the very edge of the mattress and peering into the dimness where Roy’s body is marked out with a denser form of dark.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” he asks.

“I do not think I know where to begin,” Roy says.

“Anywhere,” Ed says.  “Doesn’t matter.  Doesn’t even have to be in English, if you don’t want to.  I’ll listen.  Just talk.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Roy says.  The sheets rustle; his silhouette sits upright— “I don’t… it is all so very… tangled.  Do you say that?  Twisted up around its own self.  I do not know if there are words; if there are, I do not think that I can find them, and… it is… Today was so much like a dream that I think—if I go to sleep, perhaps I will wake from it, and I will be back there again.”

“You won’t,” Ed says.  “You know why?”  It appears that the silhouette is shaking its head slightly.  “Because you’re stuck with me,” Ed says.  “And my American pancakes.  At least until tomorrow.”

“You are the worst part,” Roy says, shakily, and that lances through his ribs, directly through his heart, and cleanly out the other side.  “You are… you must be a part of my imagination.  No?  You are too… wonderful.  The chances are so unlikely.  It cannot be…” Roy releases a slow breath, and Ed realizes he’s holding his.  Severe cardiac damage will do that.  “I—ah.  _Putain_.  I… may I—” He extends his hand, hesitates.  “Is it—would it be—all right—if I—?”

Ed stares at him, which doesn’t help at all, given that it’s too dark to distinguish any part of his face.  “If you what?”

Roy’s fingers curl.  “I am—sorry.  It is… I should not ask, but… May I… touch your hair?”

Ed can hear that he’s breathing.  That’s a good thing, probably.

“I—” Hey, that’s his voice.  “I don’t… I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Roy’s hand clenches tighter, and then it drops.  “I—of course.  I am so sorry.  I should not ever have—”

“Because I’m _really_ fucking attracted to you,” Ed blurts out—damn his heart and his brain and his big fucking mouth; damn the depth of the night and the silkiness of the bedsheets and that tiny hint of a tremor under Roy’s gorgeous voice— “And it—I mean—I just don’t—trust myself to—know what to do about it, or when to stop, and I’ve never been any good with boundaries or letting things be what they are instead of what I want them to be, and I really _like_ you, too, and I don’t wanna fuck that part up, and it always gets fucked up when I—”

The sheets whisper; the shadows move.

Roy’s body heat radiates right through the stillness to him.  Close—so _fucking_ close—

Roy’s fingertips dance up his chest, graze up his neck, ghost across his cheek—

And then Roy leans in, keeps leaning, keeps drawing nearer—Ed feels the feather-light flick of his eyelashes first, and _then_ the heat of his breath.

Roy’s breath—

On his _mouth_ —

He can’t even fucking help gasping on his next inhale, and he doesn’t think that he can be blamed for that.

Ed’s voice is like a separate fucking entity from the rest of him tonight—divorced entirely from the raging of his blood, the slamming of his heart, the electric tingling of his skin.  He hears himself say “Oh” so softly that the interjection might well belong to someone else.

And then the faint damp heat of Roy’s words against _his_ lips— “May I?”

“Shit,” Ed says.  His heart bangs once, twice— “Yeah.  Yes.  Ple—”

Roy kisses with a single-minded intensity Ed has never seen or felt or dared to begin to imagine—like a force of nature; like a forest fire.  Like this is the only thing there is; the only thing that matters; like the world has narrowed to this dark room, the sheets, the bed, his fingertips trembling against Ed’s skin, their mouths, their mingled breath, the almost-silence—

It makes sense now that they had to invent a whole new type of kissing for the French—if Roy’s gut-melting, bone-shaking expertise is any kind of a gauge, the entire country is raring and ready to destroy unsuspecting partners with the talent of their tongues.

Ed suspects that a lot of it is Roy, though—Roy in particular.  Roy, in the dark, with his beautiful eyes shut, with all the time and all the lascivious intention in the world; _Roy_ , threading his fingers into Ed’s hairline just behind his ear, so slowly and so lightly that goosebumps flood down both Ed’s arms; Roy, making the softest little sounds in the back of his throat until Ed can’t tell what’s a murmur and what’s a moan and what’s a whimper and what’s just _surrender_.

He’s in the surrender camp himself.  He’s weak for it.  He knew he would be; here he is.  The self-involved prophecy has come to pass.

Tonight, Roy has made toothpaste so delicious that Ed’s not sure how he’s supposed to look dentists in the eye for the rest of his life.  Maybe, if he’s very fortunate, it won’t always taste like Roy’s teeth grazing along his lip, Roy’s tongue on his, Roy’s palm resting just beneath his jaw.  Maybe he won’t spend the remainder of his existence associating minty-fresh oral hygiene with the thick, sweet heat of this perfect moment and the way his whole body wants to surge into the space between them and merge and meld and disappear and just— _be_.

The hunger in him fires his blood a little hotter, pushes at his limbs—his hands lift, clench, uncurl, and fist themselves into the front of Roy’s T-shirt.  It’s really meant more to ground himself than it is as a demand, but at the slight pull of it, Roy leans in, shifting closer on the mattress, knees colliding with Ed’s shins.  It changes the angle at which their mouths were fitting together, and Roy’s nose brushes Ed’s cheek, and his hair’s so silky it almost tickles—

Kissing is wet and lights up some of the pleasure nerves in your mouth.  Ed’s stance has always been that it’s nice, but it’s not…  _necessary_.

This is not nice.

This is _amazing_.

This is the sort of endorphin high you could get addicted to; the scrape of Roy’s fingernails on his scalp is _perfect_ , and the slide of his tongue—the pressure, the give, the take, the twisting, the lathing, the turning, the wandering; all of it intensified in the darkness, carved in and scorching, until every single touch becomes a firebrand where their bodies meet—

It feels like every single blood vessel in Ed’s body has caught fire.  It feels like his skin is a shock fence; it feels like his brain melted, and his bones are rattling, and every molecule in him just wants _more_ —

Roy draws back, panting.

Ed is glad for the dark for another reason: right this second, he must be a _mess_.

Roy takes an unsteady breath.

“Yes,” Roy says, faintly.  “I think I must be dreaming.”

“You speak real good English in your dreams,” Ed says.

“It is apparent that I also flatter myself in them,” Roy says.

“You’re a pro-level dreamer,” Ed says.  “That’s pretty cool.”

“I would have thought it is pretty pathetic,” Roy says.

“Al would tell you that I’ve always had some trouble distinguishing those,” Ed says.  “I—um.”  Back to the thunder of his heartbeat in his ears.  Is this happening?  The half-damned, half-beautiful dark makes it so fucking hard to tell.  “Did you—still wanna touch my hair?”

“So much,” Roy says.  “Very much.”

“Okay,” Ed says.  His hands haven’t stopped shaking, but he raises them and pulls the tie out of his hair anyway.  He figures that anybody with what is evidently a pretty serious hair fetish would prefer it when it’s down and long and loose.  “Knock yourself out.”

Roy reaches up and pauses again, both hands outstretched this time, fingers half-bent.  “You are sure?”

“Positive,” Ed says.  It’s all for Roy’s benefit, obviously—to remind him that this is the real world by offering him something tangible.  It has nothing to do with how utterly transcendent it’ll probably feel to have Roy running those heavenly fucking hands through his hair.  It’s pure magnanimity.  Clearly.  “Helps me get to sleep anyway.”

It doesn’t seem particularly prudent to add _You just had your tongue halfway down my throat; I don’t think your fingers in my hair is going to make any difference_.  Besides, it’s… comforting.  It’s reassuring that Roy didn’t interpret the first _Yes_ as blanket consent.  That makes Ed feel weirdly sort of safe.  Keeping control of himself in the face of Roy’s sheer, mind-melting hotness has proved indescribably difficult at best, but compartmentalizing distinct actions kind of guides Ed’s hands back onto the reins.

Roy’s next breath leaves him softly, shivering with something like reverence.  His hands lift; his fingers twine slowly into Ed’s hair—

Yeah.  That feels like a gift straight from the palm of the evolution-god who created sensation.  That feels like the single, solitary moment that human nerves developed themselves for.

Ed leans into it, and Roy’s fingers bend and then drag themselves slowly down through the full length of Ed’s hair before they slide free and linger near his shoulder blade.  Roy’s hand hovers behind him, and then Roy’s next inhalation shudders on its way into his lungs.

“Hey,” Ed says, pitching his voice as low and soothing and unassuming as he can.  “Lie down for a sec.  Easier on your arm.  And my neck.”

“Mmm.”  The slightly sleepy murmur thing is far too much like the more-than-slightly sexy moan thing he was doing two minutes ago, but the end result is that Roy settles down in the bed with his head on the pillow—or on some object that looks moderately pillow-shaped in the dark.  Ed scoots over to lay down beside him.  “Is this… this is all right for you?”

Ed’s not sure whether Roy’s referring to the position in the bed—which is to _die_ for, as it happens—or the fact that he’s started petting Ed like a fluffy dog with its paws hiked up onto the fence, so he just says, “’Course” to both.

“If you are sure,” Roy says.  Tentatively, his fingertips delve into the hair at Ed’s temple again and then gradually start carding through.

“I’m sure,” Ed says.  He’d say it even if this wasn’t sensory heaven, made all the more delicious by the isolation of the dark room and the silence other than the respective rhythms of their breath.

On which note… Roy’s is still too fast.

“Hey,” Ed says again, putting the voice back on.  “Relax.  It’s okay.  Breathe with me real slow.”

“You are good at this,” Roy murmurs.

“Al’s got a panic disorder,” Ed says—and he immediately wants to yank the words back into his mouth and swallow them whole, obviously, but it’s too late now.  “It… after our mom died, his separation anxiety got _really_ bad, so I had to pick up a couple of tricks really quick to try to help him.  After we got health insurance through school and everything, he got on a pretty good medication for it, too, and he’s just… doing a lot better with it now.  This whole trip for him was sort of a test to see if he could handle it.  And he’s done really great.”

“But then you are alone, no?” Roy says.  “You are the one who has been left behind.”

Ed’s heart skitters.  His throat sticks.  All the detailed, meditative thoughts about even respiration go right out the window, and he chokes a little bit.

“I—guess,” he says.  “I mean—yeah.  Yeah, I am.”

Roy’s fingers stroke through his hair once more, twice more— “This… seems that it happens to you too often.”

“Jeez,” Ed says, wrangling his quavering voice under control by force.  “Anybody ever tell you that you’re a pain in the ass?”

Roy laughs softly.  “Yes.  Many anybodys.  Very often.”

“Okay,” Ed says.  “As long as you know.”

“I did not mean to be painful,” Roy says.  “And I am sorry for that.  It just strikes me oddly.”

“Well, it’s not like Al left forever or something,” Ed says.  “And it’s not—I mean, sure, yeah, our dad fucked off, but it’s not like—Mom _meant_ to die on us, you know?  Shit just—happens.  Shit happens.  And you pick up and do the best you can.”

Roy twirls his finger in a lock of hair that had draped against Ed’s neck, so that his knuckles brush gently against Ed’s cheek, and _that_ —

Jesus fuck.  Is this really happening?  The dark makes it so easy to forget, so easy to pretend, so easy to _let go_ of all of it—all the second guesses, all the inhibitions, all the rationale.  Who is he with all the thick stone walls of logic torn away?

“You should not always have to do the picking up,” Roy says.  “You should not always have to be the one who is moving on.  And you should not have to do it on your own.”

“‘Should’ doesn’t carry a whole lot of weight with the universe,” Ed says.  “When did this turn into a pity party?  You’re supposed to be indulging your little hair fetish until you fall asleep.”

“Forgive me,” Roy says.  He slides his fingers all the way down through another section, drawing it forward this time, so that his curled hand ends up resting against Ed’s collarbone.  The jig’s up now: he’ll be able to feel the way Ed’s heart is pounding.  “I suppose it is… I should not guess so many things about your personal life.  It somehow… it feels more natural to speak these things than it should be.  This is a line like a movie you would refuse to watch, but nonetheless it is the truth—it feels that I have known you for very much longer than a day, and I… forget how I should be acting.”

“Act like you,” Ed says, which is better than _I know; I know; what the hell is going on?  It’s so easy—it’s too easy.  Nothing’s ever this easy; nothing is supposed to be_.  “That’s—I mean—”

A flare of light from outside snares his attention before he can muddle his way through the rest of the thought—he sits up instinctively to get a better angle for looking out the window, and Roy’s fingers side against his chest as he moves.

The Eiffel Tower is lighting up—but not because it’s on fire, or anything; in a way that looks artsy and deliberate and… 

“What the hell time is it?” Ed manages.

“Mm,” Roy says, and in the glow from the Tower, with the aid of the ambient city lights, Ed can just make out his face when it’s turned towards the window.  Bastard looks drowsy and bemused and absolutely beautiful.  Like the worst of the fucking paintings in the Louvre—the ones that draw your eye and stab your heart and drag you in with _feelings_ , even though they’re nothing more than oil paint that someone long since dead smeared onto a canvas exactly right.  “In the summer, they do…” He gestures vaguely towards the window with the hand not lingering near Ed’s on the mattress.  “…this… on the hour until two, some nights.  So then it must be no later than that.”

“Is it ever distracting?” Ed asks.

Roy pauses for a long, long moment, and in the faint light, Ed can just see a ripple of consternation cross his face.

“I… do not quite remember,” Roy says.  “I think… perhaps.  Sometimes.  Mostly I believe I have slept despite it.”

“Yeah,” Ed says.  He tries to lower himself to the bed again gradually—no sudden movements; no shaking the mattress; no tugging the sheets.  “Probably you get used to it after a while.  I usually sleep through earthquakes.”

There is another rather lengthy silence, although this one has a rather different character.

“Through _earthquakes_?” Roy says eventually.

“The little ones,” Ed says.  “There are a lot, okay?  They’re just… normal.  Unless you’re real sensitive to it, or your bed really sucks, or you’ve got a big rack of antique teacups in the room, or something—”

“How does a bed suck?” Roy asks.

Ed’s brain has decided, quite firmly, not to travel _anywhere_ helpful with those inputs.

“Uh,” he says.  “I… uh.  I meant… you know.  Like.  If it’s… if it’s creaky.  Or… unstable.  And you’d… you’d… notice if it… shakes.”

He braces himself for Roy to say something about better ways to shake the bed, or to suggest that creaking from the bed-frame is an indicator of success, or whatever other Frenchly raunchy thing might fit the best.  There’s a part of him that’s eager for it, too—a part hungering for every single fragment of foreplay that he can get.  If Roy keeps responding with innuendo, obviously it doesn’t necessarily demonstrate that he _wants_ anything, but it has to mean that Ed’s presence isn’t such a colossal turn- _off_ that it’s swept those thoughts out of his head entirely.  It doesn’t prove that he’s into Ed, but it does strongly imply that he doesn’t absolutely abhor the _idea_ of being into Ed in a theoretical way.

…Ed can almost hear Al saying, _Brother, if he wasn’t into you, he wouldn’t have tried to wrap his gosh-darned tongue around your tonsils_.

And while Ed has to admit that imaginary-Al sort of has a point, it’s still… strange.  It doesn’t add up, and the puzzle pieces don’t align.  Roy, being the way that he is, could be into just about anyone in the world that he wants, including supermodels and celebrities and artists and musicians and people who are really funny without even trying.  That is the baseline of fact against which all other hypotheses must be measured, and none of Ed’s recent observations make sense.

But Roy doesn’t give him another mischievously meaningful comment to turn over and analyze and plumb for clues about whether kissing Ed was a matter of desire or a whim born of convenience.

He just says, “Mm” again, and then his fingertips brush against Ed’s shirt on their way to find the ends of Ed’s hair again.  The hair thing is confusing, too.  It might just be a hair thing, and not an _Ed’s_ hair thing.  All of this might just be coincidence, because Ed is the person who happened to wind up in Roy’s apartment when he’s at his loneliest and his weakest and his worst.  Any kind of bandage is better than a free-flowing wound, isn’t it?

“You ready to get some sleep now?” Ed asks.  “If it’s already two, I think it might be brunch that you get instead of breakfast, but it’s probably good if we maximize whatever sleeping time we’ve got.”

“Yes,” Roy says, nearly slurring it, and Ed’s heart just keeps finding more and more sharp rocks to hurl itself against these days.  This is so fucking sweet and warm and domestic and _nice_ that he just wants to curl up right here and stay for as long as he’s welcome, but he doesn’t even know if it’ll be like this tomorrow.  All of this could have been a fluke of desperation.  All of this could have been a wild and reckless attempt on Roy’s part to feel something like at-home.  Tomorrow might be completely different.  Tomorrow Roy probably won’t need him anymore.  “That is… you are… always very clever.  Yes, we should be sleeping.  _Bonne nuit_.”

“You, too,” Ed says, and if his mouth’s a little dry, and and his heart is not quite steady—

Well.  Roy has that effect on a lot of people, probably.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still making bad decisions, including ones that result in super inconsistent updates. Sorry! ;__; July has also been… an adventure.
> 
> Officially finished this fic this morning, though, so that's a start! \o/ It's 67K in total – I have no idea how many more chapters that is, so we'll get to find out together. XD

Ed wakes up in the middle of the night—or, really, the nastiest hours of the morning—and the oppressive heat makes it even more difficult to orient himself for several long, unsettling seconds.

Clawing his way back to comprehension and remembering that he is, in fact, in the bed of a no-longer-exactly-a-stranger-but-still-pretty-close Frenchman named Roy who he made out with a couple hours ago doesn’t actually help very much: it doesn’t alleviate the sticky warmth of the room; and it only changes the character of his confusion.  His cheeks heat, and his brain spins, and the sweat already gathered on the small of his back starts to prickle.

What the fuck is he supposed to do in the morning?

That is—the real-morning.  The survivable-morning.  It feels like it’s after four; if it was much after five, he’d be detecting some sun by now, but the room’s still so dark that he can only just see a slice of light along the bridge of Roy’s nose, backlighting his eyelashes.  There’s an outline of jaw and neck, and then the rest blends into sheets and shadow.

Ed knows that he needs to go back to sleep if he wants to have any hope of making it through whatever tomorrow decides to bring.  He also knows that speculating about what that will be won’t affect the nature of the offerings: he’s going to have to take it as it comes, and no amount of over-thinking will secure the future that he wants.

What _does_ he want?

Well—Roy, obviously.  More of Roy, in just about every understanding of the phrase.  More skin, more access, more conversation, more mouths, more hearts, more heartbeats, more time, more truths.  More of the impossibly comfortable, bizarrely uncomplicated, beautiful mess they’ve made of this thus far.

He supposes that that, like many things, will have to start with breakfast.

Once he’s handled that part, he can worry about the rest.

  


* * *

  


Ed supposes that it’s fair: he received enough small miracles yesterday to merit an anti-miracle this morning.

Waking up the second time is worse than waking up the first.  The air feels even thicker and muggier; Ed’s eyelids feel like anvils, and his skin is clammy with the concentrated sweat, like the perspiration soaked in and turned the outer layers of his epidermis into a grody, clay-like sponge.  Developing a description in his head which captures the disgustingness of the sensation may be better left for poets, but damn it, he intends to _try_.  At least he’ll have that if he expires from the dehydration any time soon.

Enough sun pours through the window now for him to gauge the time relatively confidently at eight o’clock at least—which would mark a reasonable hour to get up if not for the night they had.  Lazing around in a borrowed bed all day would summarily destroy the last feeble vestiges of manners and civility that Ed has clung to since moving out of the countryside, however, so he sits up as carefully as he can and slides gingerly to the edge of the bed.

He goes completely still when Roy makes a little faint-sad-confused noise—instinctive, indistinct, and deep from the chest; a questioning murmur of a sound.  His eyelashes flicker, but he doesn’t even quite open his eyes.

“It’s okay,” Ed says in the hush-voice he used to use on Al when they were kids, and the nightmares got nasty.  “Go back to sleep.”

And he wants—

More.  It’s not right—not fair, not soon enough, not even close to reasonable.  He’s known this guy less than twenty-four hours.  He does not have the _slightest_ cause to want to lean over and smooth Roy’s hair back from his face and kiss his forehead and bid him some sweetness for a few last dreams.

The second’s hesitation saves him: Roy rolls over onto his front, buries his face in the pillow, and folds both arms beneath it.  Which is good, insofar as it prevents Ed from attempting to execute any of his unwarranted little fantasies, but also a _problem_ , because holy shit, those shoulders are even more mouth-watering in direct light.  And those fucking biceps—even the _elbows_ —who the fuck has sexy elbows?  Who the fuck authorized Roy Mustang to own a pair of them?  That shouldn’t even be evolutionarily possible, and Ed wants to have _words_ with whoever legalized this.

Maybe it’s not legal.  Maybe they’re _illicit_ sexy elbows; maybe—

Maybe Ed should get the fuck up, grow the fuck up, take a damn shower, and make some breakfast like he promised.

Yeah, that sounds good.

  


* * *

  


Ed considers American breakfast a success when the mingling smells of the bacon and the pancakes seduce Roy out of what seemed like a fairly deep sleep right up until he raised his head and looked around.  He pauses for the space of a few seconds, blinking around himself, and Ed—who just so happened to have turned around to start plating toast, which he left unbuttered because some people have weird preferences about condiments, and that’s okay—smiles at him in what he hopes is an encouraging way.  Either it works, or the prospect of the food did, because Roy rolls out of the bed, stumbles getting to his feet, and then makes a bleary beeline for the kitchenette.

Ed miscalculated.  Ed miscalculated very badly.  He has coaxed the panther out of its den and directly towards himself, and the panther’s concept of personal space is not awake yet.

Roy stands just a half-step too close, but the difference makes Ed’s skin simmer at the thought of—anything.  At the thought of their arms brushing; at the thought of Roy’s fingertips on his shoulder; at the thought of their hips colliding if they try to move past each other too fast.  At the thought of how devastatingly _good_ this would feel if it was deliberate—if it wasn’t an accident of sleep-blurred misjudgment.  If Roy…

Well, it doesn’t matter what the _if Roy_ s trick his susceptible little animal brain into believing: what he has is an actual Roy, and an actual breakfast to finish up.

“You have done so much,” Roy says.  “I was seeing all the groceries you had bought, but I did not realize… I was thinking perhaps you would not have to _cook_ them all, or you would… or if some were for tomorrow, or…”

Heat leaches up Ed’s face, starting in his throat and racing for his cheekbones, at no more than the fucking abstract thought that Roy assumed he’d stay another night.  “If you’re gonna put me up, the least I can do is make you some damn good food.”

Roy mumbles something incomprehensible that sounds like either a curse or a prayer, or possibly a combination of the two.  Roy seems the type to mix them.

“I must have coffee,” he says, at a much more understandable volume.  “Would you—”

“Yes,” Ed says.  “Please.  Holy shit.”

Roy’s sleepy, hazy-eyed, tousle-haired grin might be enough to bring Ed to his knees if he wasn’t leaning against the counter right now.  “Yes.  Holy shit.  I am only hoping that the coffee is a tiny bit close to as good as what you have made.”

“What’d you get?” Ed asks.

Roy reaches up to one of the cabinets— _another_ mistake on Ed’s part, but a gorgeous one that leaves him dry-mouthed and starry-eyed, because watching the shift of the muscles in Roy’s back pretty much qualifies as a religious experience—and takes down a one-pound bag of beans.  “It is… one from the grocery that I think I have had before.”  He turns it over in his hands—fuck his hands, too, honestly; they’re knee-weakening—and stares at the label on the back.  Both sides have enough fancy gold foil and French words in cursive that Ed’s not too worried about it, but the bewildered expression on Roy’s face is so adorable that he can’t bear to interrupt.  “Or I… perhaps it is not?  It may be a… gamble.  One should never gamble with caffeine.  That was foolish of me.”

“Fuck it,” Ed says, which is more coherence than he should be capable of with heart-rate spiking like this.  “Let’s give it a try, and if it’s bad, we’ll just—go out and get better coffee later.”

Roy smiles at him warmly, and he’s trapped in the glow of it, and only a tickle of a recollection that he might be about to burn some bacon drags him back down to Earth.

In the nick of time, too, because there’s a fairly fine line between perfectly crispy and burnt to cinders, and he’s usually good at riding it.

Speaking of things he’d like to r—

Jesus.  He can only hope that coffee will help him get his brain under control.

  


* * *

  


The coffee—like most of the coffee Ed’s had here, or at least all of the coffee that Al made for him or took them to while they were out—is stellar.

Breakfast is just as stellar.

Roy’s borderline-orgasmic facial expressions as he tucks into it are both better and worse than stellar.  Ed supposes that he deserves this torment, in a cosmic sort of way.  He’s committed enough minor crimes against the universe, including but not limited to wearing patterns on patterns with reckless abandon, to have earned the retribution.

“Surely,” Roy says the first time he pauses for breath, which is several minutes in; “you do not undertake to make this every single day.”

“Nah,” Ed says.  He tore through his share of the bacon, sure, but in the bizarrest twist of fate yet, his appetite went MIA the minute Roy started eating.  He’s spent most of his time at the table sipping at his coffee and resting his chin on his hand and using his fork to move things around on his plate.  Part of it’s the heat, but most of it’s… well.  Most of it’s obvious.  “Don’t have time to do it very often.  But my mom used to make us a big, huge breakfast every single Sunday, and the first weekend after she died, it…” Why is he saying this?  He should fill his mouth with coffee and then shut it and not go down this road—not go anywhere near it.  “Well, there wasn’t any, and… Al just cried.  For _hours_.  I couldn’t do anything; he wouldn’t even listen to me.  He was just a kid.  We were both just kids.  So I did the only thing I could think of, which was… trying to figure out how to make breakfast.  She had cookbooks, and I’d seen her do it a million times, and I sorta knew how to crack an egg, so… I did the best I could.  And I burnt everything, but in retrospect that’s a lot safer than under-cooking most of that stuff, so at least it was done.  And Al stopped crying for a little while.  And I got better a _hell_ of a lot better at not burning stuff as time went on.”

That came out… way more detailed and way more honest than he meant it to.  Damn.  More coffee it is.  _Much_ more coffee.  Why do they sell coffee beans in one-pound bags when they could just deliver by the truckload?  Way more efficient.  Way more practical.  Way more life-giving.

He drinks deeply, which also gives him a good excuse to bury his face in the rim of the mug instead of having to see Roy’s reaction.

“That is an unfortunate reason,” Roy says, very softly; Ed chances a half-glance, and he looks sincere; “to have discovered a fortunate thing.  It seems you are very good at cooking.”

“Really just breakfast,” Ed says.  “That’s the one I practiced the most.  Though I guess you can kinda cook breakfast at any time of the day if you want to.”

“It is the skill that is remarkable,” Roy says.  “More so than the specific… what would you… plate?  Dish?  Meal.  Any of those.  I will let you choose the one you like the most.”

“Generous,” Ed says.  “Are you trying to tell me that you can’t cook?”

“I can cook very well,” Roy says.  “Far too well.  I cook things until they become ashes, and then there is smoke, and my neighbors are very angry, and the fire-fighters are very angry—and also very attractive, but so angry that they seem to think that my requests for a date are perhaps sarcastic?”  He grins rakishly.  “I do not know that part for sure.  But if you would like something to be cooked to the very brink of oblivion, I would be delighted to cook for you.”

Ed finds himself grinning back.  Sneaky bastard has a way of sliding directly from deadpan into sly amusement, and by the time you’ve caught up, you’re already on board with his bullshit.  “Huh.  Good to know.  I’ll get in touch if I ever want anything charred past recognition.  Or if I ever want to meet some French firefighters.”

Roy sips his coffee.  “They are cute.  But not quite not so cute as you.”

Maybe they’ll need the firefighters after all: Ed’s face is definitely boiling fit to ignite.  “You—what?  Oh, my God.  Um—do you want more bacon?”

“Yes, please,” Roy says, beaming, which is without a doubt the single most sensible thing he’s said so far in their acquaintance.

  


* * *

  


“I have been thinking of a few suggestions for some more grueling tourism,” Roy says after he gets dressed—which he does _right there_ , out in the middle of the room, _in front of Ed_ , like some kind of shameless, exhibitionary… Frenchman.  Ed tried to spend the duration of the torment courteously fussing around with his phone instead of staring with his mouth open, but—still.   _Still_.  “However, the two that I was thinking might appeal to you most closely are both a bit… they are… somewhat morbid, perhaps?  I hope you would not be offended.”

“I’m pretty tough to offend,” Ed says.  “Usually I’m the one doing the offending, so it only seems fair.”

“I am not sure of that,” Roy says.  “But before either of the others—of course we must go to the Eiffel Tower.  If you are a tourist in Paris, I think perhaps it may be illegal if you do not go up.  I would hate for you to be arrested and deported when your brother has not yet arrived, so we must take the… precaution, do you say?”

“Yeah, that works,” Ed says.  His phone is doing a piss-poor job of distracting him from the fact that denim was apparently invented with the specific intention of conforming to Roy Mustang’s thighs someday.  “Is it expensive?  I think I read it’s expensive.”

Casually, Roy adjusts the collar of his shirt.  “It is not as expensive as bail.”

“Damn,” Ed says.  “You sure you don’t still secretly work for the tourism industry?  That sounded an awful lot like blackmail.”

“You have found me out,” Roy says.  “In all of my… nefarious… what is it, the way of making a noun out of being nefarious?”

“Nefariousness, I think,” Ed says.  “But it should really be ‘nefariosity’, because that’s more fun.  English is such a spoilsport.”  He resists the powerful urge to glance towards the window that frames their target so magnificently that its allure is even harder to resist.  “Okay—fine.  Eiffel Tower it is.  Then what?”

“There is a place where we can walk through the Catacombs,” Roy says.  “And also a very famous cemetery which is quite appealing despite its… purpose.”

Damn.   _Damn_.  This guy has known him for less than a day.  Is Ed really _that_ predictable?

It might have something to do with the small but prominent collection of patches that Al bought and then hand-stitched to his backpack for him—which display a range of messages along the lines of _Coffee or Death_ and _I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead_ and his personal favorite, _Science Is a Special Kind of Masochism Specifically for Nerds_ —complete with some skulls and some decorative flames and some necessary coffee cups.

“Fine,” Ed says.  “You win this round.  Both of those sound awesome.  Are the Catacombs super nasty?  Like, should we eat afterwards instead of before?”

“I suspect you will not have any issue with it,” Roy says, “so I suppose we can decide as we are going.”  He squints over at the little porcelain-faced gold-rimmed clock on the wall, which is such a kitschy Parisian apartment décor selection that Ed has been avidly trying to pretend that it doesn’t exist.  “But perhaps we should make our way along?  I think the only fate more terrible than an arrest for failing to see the Tower would be starving in the streets.”

“Yeah,” Ed says, slinging his phone into his pocket and his backpack over his shoulder.  “We don’t want it to come to some _Les Mis_ shit.”

“Ah,” Roy says, and the amusement playing on his face as he holds the door is _unjust_.  “You have an appreciation for musicals?”

“Hell, no,” Ed says.  “I actually hate ’em.  But my friend Winry had a phase, so we saw… a lot.  A _lot_.  Although we made the mistake of taking my friends Ling and Lan Fan with us to _Miss Saigon_ , and we ended up walking out, so I still don’t know how that one ends.  It just drives me up the wall that people burst into song all the time, and the rest of the writing and dialogue and stuff is an afterthought, so it just gets—clunky.  I just can’t suspend my disbelief enough for the random singing thing.  Nobody _does_ that.”

Roy, leading the way back towards the elevator, is grinning again—Ed can see the edges of it, and he can hear it unmistakably.  “That sounds quite a lot like a challenge, you know.”

“Don’t you dare,” Ed says.  “I will find a way to leave you in the Catacombs forever.”

“You wound me,” Roy says delightedly.  “I think perhaps I will write a song about it so that you understand how much.”

“ _No_ ,” Ed says.

Roy laughs, the bastard.

  


* * *

  


With that conversation kicking off the day, Ed had thought that they were in pretty good form, overall—that their relationship, whatever its particulars, whatever early-morning indiscretions neither of them had elected to talk about, was holding steady, and they were on cordial and companionable terms.

As they near the Eiffel Tower, though, Roy seems a little… off.

He hasn’t faltered once in the ongoing banter—which is annoying as _hell_ ; Ed should have a first-language advantage at the very least, but he can barely keep up—and his tone of voice has never wavered away from the trademark suave cordiality, but his pauses to rummage for vocabulary words have grown longer, and he keeps casting long glances over and up at the Tower as they approach.  Somehow, Ed gets the sense that it isn’t a function of the length of the line waiting to ascend; or of the sheer, unapologetic touristiness of what they’re about to do.  It’s something… else.  Ed just can’t quite put his finger on what.

The something-elseness continues and intensifies as they inch through the line, buy their tickets, and start heading on up the stairs to avoid the interminable follow-up queue at the elevators.  Ed’s body is going to hate him even more than usual tomorrow for hoofing it up some six hundred and seventy-odd steps, but it should be grateful that he’s saving money to buy it more food, since the elevators cost _extra_ _money_.  Ed’s guessing-slash-hoping hard that there are probably exceptions made for people with mobility concerns, but—still.  What the hell?  Stairs it is.

Dragging his miserable body up the endless steps monopolizes Ed’s attention enough that it’s not until he reaches the top and turns back that he figures it out: Roy’s grip on the railing is tighter than remotely necessary, and he’s sticking close to the inside edge of the stairs.  His jaw is set, and he’s trained his eyes on the flooring.

“Oh, my God,” Ed manages in between trying to wheeze in a breath or two.  “Holy shit, Roy—you—tell me you’re not acrophobic.  Tell me you didn’t just pay real fucking money to go up the fucking Eiffel Tower with me when you’re _afraid of heights_.”

“It is not an activity that one should be doing all alone,” Roy says.  He makes it to the top step and presses his back against the wall, eyeing the view with such immense mistrust that Ed suspects he’d be getting real fucking pale if it wasn’t for all of the exertion.  “It is… I could not just… stay below, so then…”

“You are unreal,” Ed says.  “You—go back down, you idiot.”  That came out sounding a touch stronger than he meant it to, so he follows up quickly with, “It’s fine; I mean it!  I really don’t mind.  Last thing I want is for you to be suffering on _my_ behalf.”

“Lend me your phone?” Roy says, holding a hand out.

Ed stares at Roy’s face, and then at Roy’s outstretched hand, and then back up at the face again.  Fortunately, there weren’t too many other stalwarts who took the stairs, and the family who staggered up ahead of them went directly into the elevator to the top level instead of sticking around to document this portion of the view, so there isn’t anyone to watch him making extremely stupid faces in response to the extremely stupid thing that this extremely stupid bastard just did to both of them.

“What?” he manages.

Roy curls and uncurls his fingers in a relatively restrained iteration of the universal _gimme_ gesture.  “You look very… striking with the city behind you like this.  We should take a photo for your brother.”

“Excuse me,” Ed says.  “I was in the middle of berating you for your shitty choices.  The least you could do is pay attention.”

“Forgive me,” Roy says.  He says that an awful lot, come to think of it.  “I am so easily brought to distraction by your hair.”

“Stop sweet-talkin’ me when I’m trying to be mad at you,” Ed says.  “You usually get away with it, don’t you?  Is that your M.O.?”

“It is most certainly my secret weapon,” Roy says.  “But also it is true.”  He draws out his phone, flicks a fingertip across the screen, and then holds it up.  “Please?  It will help to take my mind off of the space between our very fragile bodies and the very distant pavement.”

Scowling doesn’t seem to have any effect, so Ed crosses his arms for good measure.  “Don’t you dare try to manipulate my sympathy to get me to pose for you _and_ get yourself off the hook.”

“You do not need to pose,” Roy says, gently tapping at his screen and watching it intently.  “You look perfect as you are.”

“Shut up,” Ed says.

“I will not,” Roy says, perfectly calmly, and this time he taps the bottom of the screen, so Ed _knows_ he just took a picture.

“You’re a piece of work,” Ed says.  “What the hell am I supposed to do with you when we get to the top?”

“Hold me,” Roy says, once again so blithely that it takes Ed a second to register the lightning searing up his spine.  “And wipe away my tears.”  He grins before Ed can kick his sorry ass for trivializing something that is painful, regardless of the circumstances—and it’s a softer grin than most of the others.  A sweeter one; a kinder one.  Genuine.  “Ed—please.  I want to go with you.  I have never seen the city from the top of the Tower.  Can you believe that?  All these years, I have never… I have always been too cautious, or too afraid.  I have never had a sufficient reason.  I have never forced myself to do it even though a part of me has always wished it.  But you are a reason.  I will be seeing it for the first time, and seeing _you_ see it for the first time.  And also, if I vomit, we will get to watch it travel a very long way down.”

“You’d better not fucking puke,” Ed says.  “With gravitational acceleration, that’d probably _kill_ somebody from this height.  Can you imagine coming to Paris like a normal tourist and dying because some idiot threw up on you from the top of the Eiffel Tower?”

“Threw up down, no less,” Roy says.

“Yeah, you’re so talented,” Ed says.  “We all believe you.  You don’t have to prove it.”  He hesitates, but he already knows he’s on the brink of caving, and it’s just a matter of another breath before the remainder starts to crumple.  “Are you _sure_?  You really—shouldn’t.  And you really don’t have to.  I’ll pay you back the seven Euro.  I don’t care about that; I just—don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“I will be fine,” Roy says.

“BS you will,” Ed says.  “How much do you weigh?  I don’t know if I can carry you to the elevator if you pass out.”

“I will not pass out,” Roy says.  “I have done things of this… sort… before.  It has been… required, or forced, or perhaps both.  And this is one that I am happy for, as much as I am… uncertain.”

Ed is ninety percent sure that pushing Roy off the top of the Tower is the only option at this point, but that’d be even more dangerous than the puke.  Plus they probably have guard rails and stuff.  “I have seven Euro on me.  I have it in _cash_.  You don’t… have to.”

“I know,” Roy says, sliding his hands into his pockets and hiking his shoulders up a bit.  “But I want to go with you.  It is the truth.  I do.”

Ed’s still not sure he believes that, but it doesn’t really matter what he believes: if Roy is going to insist on heading right on up to the top of his own personal nightmare, Ed can’t stop him.  Or at least Ed can’t stop him without knocking him unconscious, and the French police probably frown on that sort of thing.  He really doesn’t want to have to call Al from _le slammeur_ and beg for bail.

“All right,” he says.  “Just—don’t say I didn’t warn you.  And don’t say I didn’t try to talk you out of it.”

“You tried your very utmost,” Roy says, so softly that it almost tricks Ed’s brain into thinking that that’s an acceptable sentence construction.  “And I am appreciative of that.”  He smiles again, the utter bastard, and then gestures towards the elevator.  “Should we?”

“Probably not,” Ed says.  He presses his thumb into the elevator button.  “But ‘shouldn’t have, did anyway’ is sort of the story of my life.”

“I would buy the novelization,” Roy says.

“ _Jeez_ ,” Ed says, and it’s good to know that all of this excitement hasn’t robbed him of his favorite word.

  


* * *

  


Roy does not appear to be enjoying the elevator any more than he enjoyed the first landing.  In fact, Roy appears to be enjoying it significantly less, if the way he’s standing in the precise center of the elevator car and staring intently at the ceiling to avoid having to look out through any of the glass walls is any indication.

“Hey,” Ed says, mostly just to try to take Roy’s mind off of it.  “Not trying to, like, accuse you of anything—just curious—but how come this is so bad, but you were fine at Montmartre?”

“It is different,” Roy says without moving a muscle other than his mouth.  The mouth is enough.  _God_ , he has a great mouth.  “It is… that is a hill.  It is a natural elevation.  And one moves upward in a… diagonal fashion.  On an… inclination?  However it is called.  One does not hang over the edge of it, as it does not have an edge.  One could not plummet to one’s death and explode upon reaching the unforgiving pavement.”

A lady in the corner who was appreciating the view casts a glance over at them that looks fairly judgmental, and Ed only barely resists the urge to stick his tongue out in response.

“This,” Roy goes on, “is a giant metal stick of a structure built by human beings.  It is a monument to hubris as much as to France.  We are traveling directly vertical, and there is an edge of the thing, and the view of the height is not outward; it is _below_.  This is… it is much more… difficult.”

The elevator chooses that moment to make a grinding noise and rattle around them a bit.

Roy goes _pale_ , and the inauspicious sounds fade in time for Ed to hear the faint, slight, piteous whine Roy’s making in the back of his throat.  He clenches his fists at his sides so tightly that his knuckles bleach bone-white, and Ed—

Just—

Can’t.

Just doesn’t have it in him.

He can’t watch another person endure some sort of pain and do _nothing_.

His instincts have always fallen into the coveted category of _bad, verging on disastrous_ , and apparently Paris hasn’t trained him out of it: his body acts without his brain’s permission, and he reaches out and grabs Roy’s hand.

Roy startles and glances down—but before Ed can retract his hand and attempt to sputter something stupid but sincerely apologetic, a ghost of a smile flickers over Roy’s expression, and that—

Shit.  To hell with it.  He’s committed now.

He squeezes Roy’s hand as gently as he can while still conveying something that feels like encouragement, or at least solidarity, and settles himself close to Roy’s side.  Jesus, this feels… intimate.  Why is it that expressing affection in little ways seems so significant?  Is it some sort of normalization factor—the fact that anyone looking at them from a distance would assume they’re together, and it’s an established thing, because the gestures look comfortable and familiar?

They’re not, obviously.  It’s yet another minuscule miracle that Ed’s hands aren’t clamming up so rapidly that marine biologists would want to study him.  He is straight-up, full-on, undeniably holding hands with a hot guy he met yesterday and made out with last night—though he’s gradually beginning to doubt the reality of that second part, since they still haven’t acknowledged that it happened in any way.  Maybe it didn’t happen.  Maybe Ed’s just so thirsty that he hallucinated it and climbed into Roy’s bed in the middle of the night to substantiate the hallucination, and Roy played along this morning to be polite.

…it is possible that he’s executing another Olympic-caliber routine of what Al calls _Cognitive Dissonance Gymnastics_.

Before he can consider the unlikelier, albeit simpler, alternate explanations for much longer, though, the elevator shudders to a stop, Roy grips his hand, and then the silver doors part in the middle.

The other lady dives out of there like the place is on fire, so Ed looks up at Roy and says, “You _sure_ you’re sure about this?”

“No,” Roy says.  “But I think it is somewhat too late for that now.”

“Not really,” Ed says.  “You could just go back down and wait at the bottom instead of torturing yourself.  It’s really okay.”

Roy’s grasp on his hand tightens slightly, and then Roy takes a deep breath and forces a smile.

“We are here,” he says.  “I may as well try to enjoy it.”

“Weirdo,” Ed says.  “All right.  C’mon.”

Trying is one thing.

Succeeding is another.

The second evades Roy entirely, by the looks of it.

“Oh,” Roy says two full paces back from the extremely secured, fenced-and-netted-and-barred-to-hell openings carefully curated to prevent them from even fantasizing about hurling themselves to their doom.  “It is—we are—very high.  We are very high up.”

“Just go back,” Ed says, releasing Roy’s hand in the interests of trying to push him towards the elevator.  “I’ll just take a couple of pictures and then come back down, okay?”

Roy ignores all of Ed’s polite attempts to rescue him from himself and creeps one step closer to the railing, gazing out and down despite the fact that it’s stolen another shade of color from his face.  He didn’t have too many of those to begin with, and he now bears more than a passing resemblance to a bedsheet.  “We must—we should get your… photo.  Your selfie photo.  For revenge.”

“You know what’s more important than that?” Ed says, pushing a little harder.  “You not getting nauseous at the top of the most famous landmark in your own city.  Will you just—”

“Quickly,” Roy says.  “Only a moment.  Where is your phone?”

“You’re the _worst_ ,” Ed says.  “Okay, fine—” In the time it takes him to fumble his phone out of his pocket, Roy has started setting his jaw so hard that Ed can almost hear the enamel grinding of off his teeth, and has also begun visibly swaying.  “Oh, holy fu—heck.”  There are kids around.  The sooner he gets this taken care of, sends Roy back down to solid ground, and teaches the ambient children as few English expletives as possible, the better.  “Why are you like this?”

“I am afraid I have not yet found other ways to be,” Roy says.

Ed slings an arm around his waist to stabilize him, which is—yet again—damningly intimate and twice as damningly transcendent.  Even trembling ever so slightly, Roy is firm and warm, and the muscles in his back—

“Say ‘cheese’,” Ed says, holding up the selfie cam and plastering on a grin.

Roy makes a valiant effort to follow suit and manages a very wan, sick-looking grimace.

“That’s not the best photo ever taken of you,” Ed says, lowering the phone and nudging Roy in the direction of the elevator again, “but it’ll do.”

Attempting to manhandle Roy away from the edge requires getting a fistful of his shirt and hauling with the arm around his waist.  Ed’s brain has absolutely nothing helpful to say about any of it and instead provides a number of increasingly useless suggestions including a calculation of the amount of force that would be necessary to remove Roy’s shirt altogether, and speculation about whether a blowjob would mitigate the phobia or not.

“It is fine,” Roy says, which is the least convincing thing that has come out of his capable mouth in their admittedly brief acquaintance.  “I will—I will stand over here, where it is safe, and I will not be dying in the immediate future, and you should… you will appreciate the view.  For as long as you wish.  It is fine.”

“It’s really not,” Ed says.

Roy looks indescribably pained.  “I have ruined it.  I have ruined the Tower.  And your vacation.  I have ruined everything.”

“Oh, my God,” Ed says.  “Would you chill out?  Just—five minutes.  All I need is five minutes.  And you haven’t ruined anything.  This is the most memorable Eiffel Tower experience anybody has ever had.”

Roy grimaces.  “I have learned enough English to know that ‘memorable’ is not always good.”

“You just stay right there,” Ed says, guiding him up against the wall of the cage around the elevator shaft, “and close your eyes and… look pretty.”

It is, all at once, far too late to retract those words and pretend that they never existed.

The solitary upshot is that—predictably, Ed supposes—they make Roy brighten up a little bit.

For the sake of making their admission tickets worthwhile—well-aware that the things hadn’t cost that much; well-aware that the line hadn’t been that long; well-aware that he can come back with Al in a couple of days and do this again—Ed makes a relatively leisurely circuit around the perimeter of the tower, documenting some of the prettiest angles with his phone.  It _is_ really striking.  Paris is laid out so geometrically, with so much green and white and gray, with the Seine curving beneath and the lives of countless citizens playing out below, that it smacks you in the face with its picturesqueness in a different way from up here.

He does genuinely enjoy it, and genuinely appreciate it, and genuinely spend a moment gazing down at the Champ de Mars and contemplating the tininess of an individual existence.

When he turns around, Roy is watching him—and lowering his phone, like he was just… what?  Trying to get the Instagram angle on the whole experience without budging from his safe vantage hugging the elevator wall?

“What was that about?” Ed asks, heading over.  “You’re not taking stalker photos of me, are you?”  He manages to bite his tongue on _To share with the followers of your French-Punk’d podcast as online bonus content_.  If the whole kiss thing actually happened—which is, admittedly, a big _if_ —the prank explanation has dropped several ranks in the list of reasons why this whole bizarre adventure is unfolding at all.  This Tower business doesn’t fit either: Roy gains nothing from Ed’s discovery of his phobia-related vulnerability except checking off a visit to a tourist trap.  It’s strategically unsound in the extreme.

“ _Mais non_ ,” Roy says, presumably as a friendly reminder that he’s just this side of too French to function.  “In the first place, I am not a stalker of you; and in the second, it was a video.”

“You say that like it makes it better,” Ed says.  “Which it _doesn’t_.”

“I am a studier of the condition of humanity,” Roy says, “and a moth to the lamplight for all things beautiful.  The way that your hair moves is like a dream.”

Ed stares at him.

Ed tries to think of something—anything—to say to that.

Ed fails.

“We should go,” he says.

“Not yet,” Roy says.  “You have barely even looked.  It is the _Eiffel Tower_ , my dear.”

Ed can’t think of anything to say to that, either, and the simple act of speaking is risky right now, because it feels like his stomach is doing backflips off the diving board and into lava.  “Well—I _saw_ stuff.  It’s the same city.  And you’re not—”

“It is not so bad to be staying here,” Roy says.  “It is the… it is seeing how far it is downward that makes me…” He holds an open hand up in front of his chest and waves it in a circle that abstractly indicates some measure of distress.  “…that makes it unpleasant.  I want to stay.  I want you to stay as long as you would wish.”

“I know,” Ed says.  “And thank you.  But I have.  How long am I supposed to stay?  Should I start a timer?”

Roy grins.  He does seem to have wrangled some color back into his face, and now looks marginally more like a person than like a ghost-slash-zombie-whatever at one of those haunted houses that they can’t ever go to again after that time that Winry instinctively punched the guy with the fake chainsaw in the face and broke his nose.  “Yes.  At least five more minutes.  You must _appreciate_ Paris.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Ed says, but Roy has the most contagious smile he’s ever seen, and exposure to it probably causes disease and definitely causes imitation.  “Just for that, I’ll stay up here for four minutes and forty-five seconds, you masochist.”

Turns out the smirk is actually worse than the grin.  Lord.  Ed’s in so much trouble there isn’t a scale on Earth to measure it by.  “I believe I can live with that compromise.”

“Good,” Ed says.  “Don’t move.”

He takes his phone back out, sets a damn alarm for four minutes to give himself some leeway, and makes a point of striding back over towards the side with the view of the big green park, which was his favorite one.  If he’s required to spend another four and a half minutes contemplating the universe, and also France, and also what they might find for lunch later, he may as well do it from the best possible vantage.

Besides, if Roy’s going to force him to spend more time standing up here staring down at the vast reaches of one of the most famous and photogenic cities in the world, he’s just going to have to do a _great job_ at it to spite Roy and also the universe for landing him here in the first place.  He takes a few very careful photos with nice framing and excellent focus, and then gets a panorama, and then takes some video panning up and down and then side to side for good measure.  He tries to pick out a couple of the places that they’ve already visited, and then he takes the artsiest picture his ruthlessly math-oriented brain can conjure, which involves weird deliberately-blurry things and using the lines of the criss-crossing bars that safely contain all of the tourists.  He gets a nice one of the shadow of the Tower splayed out across the greenery.  Then he turns around.

And catches Roy in the act of lowering his phone again.

“You know,” Ed says, “if you keep doing that, people are gonna think you’re some kind of weirdo.  And by ‘people’, I mean ‘me’.”

“To be told so by you is greatly worse,” Roy says.  “Though I must admit that I think the accusation is fair.”

“I dunno,” Ed says.  “I’m reserving judgment for a little while.  Hey, I spent your five minutes.  Are you ready to go?”

“I am ready for lunch,” Roy says.  “And ready to be very much closer to the ground.  But have you—”

“Yes,” Ed says.

“You are sure that you—”

“ _Yes_ ,” Ed says.  “And I’m hungry.  C’mon.”

Roy does not enjoy the elevator any more on the way back down than he did on the way up, so Ed sticks close by his arm in the hopes that just the presence of another person might be reassuring.  A part of him really wants to take Roy’s hand again, but that was forward enough the first time, and he’s thinking about it now—not acting.  Acting on the instinct was excusable, but his only intention was to help.  The thought is different, because when he’s thinking about it, he knows that he _wants_ to take Roy’s hand again, and that’s not helpful; that’s selfish.

When there’s a really strong lurch, Roy’s face scrunches up in a way that makes Ed’s heart hurt for a second, but other than that, the trip progresses pretty swiftly without much incident, and then Roy is power-walking right the fuck out of the elevator.  It’s about all that Ed can do to keep up, given that there are supremely unfair stride advantages involved, but fortunately Roy slows down once they’ve breached the worst of the little crowd in the queue and found some unoccupied concrete.

“At last,” Roy says.  “Would it be too dramatic to—?”

Evidently, that was a rhetorical question, because he sinks to his knees, clasps both hands, holds them to his chest, and raises his face skyward as if in a prayer of thanks, and then immediately proceeds to bend double and start patting the ground in a loving sort of way.

Ed might object to this more if it didn’t give him such an utterly sublime view of Roy’s fantastic ass.  He’s only human here.

“That was a little over-the-top,” he says as Roy straightens up.  Apparently karma agrees, because Roy grimaces and holds a hand to his lower back as he stands.  “But—y’know.  Paris sort of is.”

“That is true,” Roy says.  “You learn so very quickly.  After the magnificent breakfast, I have a place in mind for our next adventure in cuisine.  You said you like crêpes, yes?”

“‘Yes’ is an insufficient word,” Ed says.  “But I guess it’s the only one we’ve got.”  He eyes Roy.  “How far are we walking?”

“As I said,” Roy says.  “You learn so quickly.  It is barely a kilometer.”

“I don’t know if I believe you,” Ed says.

Roy winks at him, which is even less fair than any of the rest of it.  “Do you have a choice?”

“Bastard,” Ed says.  “These had better be the best crêpes on _Earth_.  All right.  Lead the way.”

“ _Avec plaisir_ ,” Roy says, and Ed’s pretty sure he knows what that one means.

  


* * *

  


Damn Roy to hell, volume Ed’s-stopped-counting: the crêpes are off the _chain_ awesome.

Ed’s probably too old and too white to say that, but now he’s stuck with the knowledge that he thought about it for the rest of his natural life.

“Holy shit,” Ed says after four—or five? or six?—bites, because that’s the first point where he manages to stop and breathe and consider speech in anything other than a theoretical capacity.  “Is it even legal to put eggs and cheese together in crêpes?  This is fucking _dynamite_.  Why isn’t everybody doing this?”

“Cholesterol?” Roy says.  “I cannot comment on the legality.  I can say only that I may perhaps be lucky I have not been caught.”

“I won’t report you,” Ed says.  “These are _so_ fucking _good_.”

“You should bring your brother here to try them when he arrives,” Roy says.

Ed’s not sure which part it is—the fact that Roy’s thinking of Al unprompted in the first place; the fact that he seems genuine in the desire to share a great thing with someone he’s only ever talked to for five minutes on the phone; the fact that his first impulse is to _share_ it, plain and simple—but something in that single sentence makes Ed’s heart squeeze hard and then swell until he’s legitimately scared it might cut off his airway.

“Yeah,” he forces out.  “Good idea.”

He’s saved from the heretofore inevitable humiliation of Roy noticing his distress by the sound of a siren, which permits him to jump right to “Shit!  Hide your crêpe, it’s the Food Police!”

There’s an instant before Roy starts laughing where he looks seriously concerned, and that’s worth more than bail money for a dozen different crêpe-related crimes.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ajfdsla oh boy. More mea culpa than usual this time around; I didn't have that long in Paris the one time I visited, and we blew an entire day trekking up to Pierrefonds to visit the castle where they filmed the BBC show "Merlin", so many of the excursions in this fic are not things I have actually experienced. I did my best!! :'(

“I’m annoyed,” Ed says.

Roy looks around them at the array of bizarre, artfully-arranged selections of innumerable long-dead citizens’ skeletons.  “What have they done that is offensive?”

“Not at the dead people,” Ed says.  “At _you_.  For knowing I was going to _like_ the dead people.  You’ve known me for, like—” He calculates in his head.  Hyperbole is all good and well, and in fact is the backbone of many of the best conversations conducted in an ordinary life, but he doesn’t even need it right now.  “—twenty-eight hours.  It’s completely unfair that you would understand my weird aesthetic that fast.”

“It was a bit of a guess,” Roy says.  “I was not entirely sure.  I have brought people which I thought would like it only to have them describe it as…” He casts an idle glance around the ambient ossuary as if one of the skulls will take a break from grinning emptily to prompt him with the words.  “…ah…”

“Metal as fuck?” Ed says.

“Mm,” Roy says.  “I believe it was ‘macabre in the extreme’.”

“Same concept,” Ed says, “different connotation.  I mean—I get it.  The whole thing’s… I can see how it could be kinda disturbing, I guess.  Like, who the fuck digs up a cemetery and then mixes up all the bones because they’re careless and then goes ‘Well, guess we can turn this into some totally unnecessary underground décor instead of trying to show any kind of respect?’  Sure.  Get that.  What they did was fucked up in the first place, and doin’ it under the cover of night and piling everybody’s family members together like that… yeah.  I can understand people objecting to that.  But at the _time_.  You know?”  He might be waving his hands a little.  It’s too late.  Fuck.  At least they miraculously caught a quiet time of day, so there aren’t too many other tourists to scandalize right now.  “This happened in the 1700s, right?  Everybody whose relatives ended up down here is dead, too.  Everybody who ever remembered them is long gone.  These aren’t people anymore, and they don’t matter to anybody who’s still around.  They’re just… what’s left.  It’s the same as all the artifacts in the Louvre at this point, except that obviously it’s gonna remind you of your own mortality a lot more.  Those of us who aren’t artists or trailblazers or some kind of writers of history—this is all we really leave behind, y’know?  They can’t all be in museums.  Might as well be here.  And—I mean, from a _strictly_ logical perspective, the assholes who did this had a cemetery overflow problem, and they solved it.  The engineering side of it is actually pretty sound.  So it’s just… the people thing.  And all the people who would’ve had the right to be offended are off in a much less fucked-up boneyard somewhere, right?  That’s all this is.  It’s bones.  Bones don’t bother me.”

He really shouldn’t have gone on that rant.  It’s not like Roy doesn’t know that he’s an insufferable, incorrigible weirdo by now—or if Roy had somehow avoided noticing so far, he would have soon—but there’s a difference between telegraphing your weirdness quietly and shoving it directly into other people’s faces at the drop of a hat.  This was shove-y.  Embarrassing.

The silence makes Ed’s skin prickle and start to heat—he can only imagine the face of half-contained disgust Roy must be making, but it won’t go away if he pretends not to see it, so he braces himself and turns to sneak a glance.

Roy is—

Just sort of—

Blinking at him.

Waiting?

When Ed makes eye contact out of sheer surprise, Roy grins and gestures to the nearest structure composed of skeletal remains.

“Would you say, then,” Roy says, “that there is _no_ _body_ who is hurt down here?”

Ed stares at him.

Then Ed has to lean on the railing alongside the pathway— installed to prevent them from rubbing their grubby, oily hands on the morbid antiques, presumably—to hold himself up while he laughs.

It’s a good thing, really, because if he wasn’t laughing, he’d probably be trying to kiss Roy again, and he can’t imagine that would end well for anyone.

  


* * *

  


The Métro lets them out close to a highly impressive stone arch entrance—which is good, because Ed’s feet and knees and back are already angry at him, and he has a premonition that they’re going to wander around inside a lot and make it worse.

“This is… how would you say… a… contrast,” Roy says, “to the prior experience.”

“Because it’s an un-desecrated cemetery that’s above ground?” Ed says.  “Where all the graves are labeled, and some of the names are gonna be familiar?”

Roy’s grin is somehow even worse when it underscores his stupid, sexy sunglasses.  “I do not think you need me to be your tour guide anymore.  You know everything as it is.”

“Shut the hell up,” Ed says, but the way he instinctively lowers his voice upon passing into the cemetery proper dulls the effect.  Cemeteries he’s familiar with.  Even big, beautiful, cultivated ones with landscaping and greenery and marble mausoleums like this one.  “If it wasn’t for you, I’d _still_ be standing in the Métro station at the Gare de Lyon, trying to figure out how the fuck to get a ticket.”

“I am confident someone would have come to the rescue of you,” Roy says.  “A cute American looking very lost is… how do you say.  A magnet?”

“Oh, my God,” Ed manages, albeit rather faintly.  “You—are you—no.  Just—shut up.  Have some respect for the dead.”

Roy is—beaming at him.  Roy has well and truly lost it sometime within the past twenty minutes.  Ed supposes that’s probably not the first time that a major European city’s public transportation has done that to a person, but all the same—

“What about for the drop-dead gorgeous?” Roy asks.

Ed—

Stares at him.  Tries to parse it; tries to run his fingertips along the edges of the puzzle pieces, because there must—there _has_ to be—

An explanation that makes sense.

“Are you trying to butter me up?” he asks.  “I know French people are into the whole butter thing.  Are you planning to eat me?  That’d be sort of rude now that we’re, like… acquainted and everything.”

He doesn’t want to say _friends_ , obviously, since he wishes that it wasn’t, and since he’s not sure they’ve even made it that far; but he can’t exactly say anything else either.  Not-really-strangers-anymore is a concept that the Germans have probably encapsulated in a single word, but English has definitely dropped the ball.

Roy’s grin fell away at Ed’s confusion, but some fragment of it cobbles itself back together—softer now.  Gentler.  Complicated.  One part amused and two parts… sad, maybe?  Something like wistful.

“You are,” Roy says, voice low, “so very… strange.”

It was only a matter of time.

“Yeah, well,” Ed says, and the upshot is that turning on his heel and starting off down the first pathway he sees doesn’t require his full attention, and he can do it with his cheeks aflame and his throat tight and his stomach twisting.  “Not the first time I heard that one; won’t be the last.  Are you coming?”

The worst part is that it all makes sense now.  Roy’s a scientist.  If he stumbled on someone _so very strange_ , of course he’d instinctively want to prod them with perfectly normal social cues and compliments and commentary just to see how they’d react.  It’s an experiment.

Ed’s strange.  He’s off-kilter.  He always has been; he’s known it since he was old enough to wrap his too-analytical brain around the concept of society.  Polite people find ways to sugarcoat it— _Oh, he’s just marching to the beat of a different drummer; oh, he’s just one of those science-minded people; oh, he’s sort of like a savant_ —but the bottom line is that his head’s wired up differently from just about everybody else.  He doesn’t fit right.  He doesn’t play well with others.  Some people make room for him, and he’s incredibly lucky to have a handful in his life who love him fiercely enough to put up with him and protect him when they have to, but he knows he doesn’t belong.  He knows he never really will.

It’s why Andy gave up on him.  He’s figured that much out.  He’s not the kind of person you make sacrifices for.  He’s not the kind of person that you keep.

He’s a curiosity.  He’s a sideshow.  He’s just odd enough to be interesting to a student of the human condition.

Everything that they’ve done so far, and everything that Roy has said, looks logical through the new lens: Ed has been under the microscope this whole time.

He should have put it together a long time ago, but Al was right—Roy’s so fucking gorgeous, so _bright_ with it, so staggeringly charismatic and unsettlingly charming that Ed’s intellectual capacities tipped over and failed.

It didn’t help that he wanted to believe it.  He wanted to believe that he could pick himself back up and dust himself back off after being cast aside by someone he’d loved as well as he knew how, and that someone even _better_ would turn up out of the ether and sweep him off his feet.  He wanted to believe he was worth that.  He wanted to believe he’d deserved it the whole time; wanted to believe that beautiful people could want _him_.  He’d checked out in the rational thought department so that he could indulge the little fantasy—just this once.  Just on vacation.  Just in Paris.

Stupid.

He should have realized he was setting himself up for the fall.

It’s fine.  He’ll be fine.  He’s scraped through worse; this isn’t even too pronounced as far as trails of blood behind him go.  This one probably won’t even terrify the populace overmuch, and it’ll wash away with the first rain.  Maybe the second.  Sure, it’s summer, but Al said something about it raining in July way more than he’d expected, so maybe—

“Ed?” Roy says, and by the uncharacteristic skitter of footsteps, Roy is scrambling to catch up with him.

Ed can’t look at him yet.  It’s possible Ed won’t be able to look at him ever again—he hopes it’s not quite that dire, since that particular condition would make the endeavor of finishing this little excursion and then going back to Roy’s place to collect his things extremely challenging, but he’ll just have to wait and see.

For the moment, he shoves his hands into his pockets and slows his stride a little bit.  Roy settles into step with him on the left side, and Ed can feel the weight of his gaze—probing, probably.  Annoyed, very likely.

“I am—sorry,” Roy says.  He doesn’t sound annoyed, but people who are good at containing their emotions often don’t.  It makes them like a minefield.  “I did not… mean… I was not wanting—to say something—unpleasant.  It appears that I did, I think.  And I am sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Ed says.  Even from his view of the paved path and the fringes of the grass impinging at its edges, this place is really pretty.  Last thing he wants to do is ruin it, the way he ruins just about fucking everything.  “It’s okay.  I _am_ strange.  I should—I mean, I know that.  Hearing it shouldn’t be any different.”

Roy is quiet for long enough that Ed sneaks a glance at him.  He’s looking straight ahead, eyes a bit distant, lips pressed together, shoulders slightly raised.  His mouth moves just a touch, like he’s working through the words he wants to use.

Probably he is.  Every single one of their conversations has been fundamentally unfair, hasn’t it?  Ed keeps expecting Roy to say precisely the right thing in a second-or-later language.

“I did not mean this,” Roy says, slowly, carefully, sounding out the syllables, “in a… bad… way.  I did not mean to say it was a bad thing.  I think—perhaps I should instead have said… you are unusual?  I do not know if that is better; I hope… I meant to say that… it is… I have found that most people will very gladly accept compliments and praises.  Many of them will take the credit for things that have not even yet been said, and may not ever be said at all.  But you are… you are so… determined… not to believe that I, or perhaps anyone, would like you, let alone to find you attractive.”

The worst part is that Ed’s such a contrary little shit at the best of times that his impulse is to fire back _“I am not!”_.  It’s unfortunate that the truth is so rarely relevant to what he feels.

In spite of all of it—his crappy instincts, the heat, the poor sleep, the personal history, the million little moments that have taught him to mistrust—he has to try to keep it together.  He has to try to be positive.  It’s what Al would want.  It’s part of being an adult.  And if Roy means what he says—or anything in the neighborhood of it, really—then he hasn’t done anything wrong.  Punishing him for Ed’s own longstanding hangups is completely unfair.

He senses almost more than he sees Roy reach out for his shoulder and then hesitate, fingertips hovering two inches shy of his skin.

“I did not mean any judgment,” Roy says softly.  “And I did not mean anything that I have said before to you as a… lie.  As a joke.”

Ed stops walking abruptly, and Roy somehow keeps perfect pace without so much as a stumble.  Ed’s always wondered what it’s like to be born anything other than hopelessly clumsy.  Even Al runs into more than his share of doorways, and for all that Winry’s mesmerizingly good with her hands, he’s seen her perennial flip flops get the better of her more than once.

“All right,” Ed says, pushing it through the pulsing knot of old hurts that have tangled together in his throat.  “I—shit.  Well—I’m sorry.  It—it’s not your fault.  You were trying to be nice.  I shouldn’t’ve…”

“What I was trying to be does not matter,” Roy says, smiling slightly wryly.  “What I did is what matters.  I should not… What I said I meant sincerely, but that is… if it is uncomfortable to you, then—I will stop from saying such things.”

Ed looks at him.

Ed keeps looking at him.

Ed attempts to pierce the surface of the impermeable calm with the sheer force of his focus.

Roy…

…winces.

“I am sorry,” he says again.  Ed’s not sure he’s ever met someone who apologizes more than he does.  It’s uncanny.  “Was that also something I should not have said?”

“No,” Ed says.  “That’s what’s messing me up about it.  You—why do you _understand_ so much?  I mean—you don’t owe me shit.  I’m just some stranger you found on a train that you felt bad for or whatever, because I word-vomited my sob-story all over you.  Why are you—you should be _mad_ that I’m acting like this.”

Roy’s brow furrows.  “Is that… should I?  I’m afraid I do not see why that should be.  I… have been in a situation not too different from this one you are in—the way you were treated by this… Andy?  If I remember the correct name.  And also I have experienced the… difficulty… in believing when people speak kindly, because you will always feel in your heart that when they do, it is because they want something in return.  Yes?”

Ed was hoping that he could put an end to the looking at Roy thing—not least because there are so many other cool things to look at in a landmark like this; and also because looking at Roy for extended periods of time is dangerous in and of itself, because it reminds you how excruciatingly hot he is all over again—but he can’t seem to tear himself away.

“Why do you know that?” he asks.  “ _How_ can you know that?  You’re—you shouldn’t—you’re not—”

He doesn’t how to say _Like me_ without it sounding pathetic.  Roy wouldn’t be second-best; Roy wouldn’t be somebody’s last resort.  Roy wouldn’t be an afterthought.  He wouldn’t be the one that people tolerated, because sometimes he was clever, and mostly he was quiet.  He wouldn’t be so acclimated to rejection that anything else looked like the jaws of a trap.

“There have been,” Roy says, rather delicately, “people who… liked the way that I…” He waves a hand up and down at himself.  “…appear?  And… thought that was enough.  Some ignored the… ignored everything else that there is, and some tried to change it, but it was always… it was as if it was a deal.  Yes?  As if I should be glad that they were letting me be near to them, because everything other than my appearance they found… unappealing.  I think—perhaps I should have realized.  The only compliments I have ever felt I was able to believe were ones about the way I look.  I should not have assumed they would sound true to you in the same way.”

“Hold up,” Ed says.  “Are you trying to tell me we’re on a level playing field here because you’re just so hot that people don’t pay any attention to your personality?”

Roy opens his mouth—which is, Ed will be the first to admit, gorgeous enough to distract one mightily from whatever is due to come out of it.

Then Roy closes his mouth.

Then Roy says, eloquently, “Hmm.”

“I mean,” Ed says, “I guess… it’s… sorta… I mean, you _understood_.  You knew where I was coming from.  I guess it doesn’t matter why.”

“Perhaps I am also very strange,” Roy says, “even if it is in a slightly different way.”

“All right,” Ed says.  “Good save.  I guess I have to let you off the hook.”

The blinding grin returns instantaneously.  “You are also so very kind, and I am so very grateful, and—”

“Don’t push your luck,” Ed says.  “So what’s good to see in this place?  Lots of famous people are decomposing here, right?”

“Yes,” Roy says, perfectly calmly, instead of _Eew_ or _You heathen_ or whatever it is that most people would probably answer to that.  “If there is anyone in particular whose site of decomposition you would like to see, I am sure there are a thousand maps we can find on the internet.  Otherwise, I suppose it is encouraged that we walk onward and simply discover where we arrive.”

Ed eyes him.  “I don’t know why people would dislike your personality in the first place.  You’re—fun.”

Roy blinks.  “I—forgive me.  What does it mean, in this sentence—‘fun’?”

“I don’t know,” Ed says.  The Humiliated Flush of Doom Because He’s Really Going to Say This Stupid Shit and It’s Too Late to Stop Himself returns with a vengeance.  “I like you.  You’re funny and smart and mostly really nice.  Don’t let it go to your head any more than it already did just now.”

“It has not gone to my head,” Roy says, _way_ too cheerfully, which might have something to do with the profusion of pink that has overtaken Ed’s defenseless face.  “It has gone to my heart.”

Ed isn’t entirely sure what he’s experiencing: it feels a little bit like nausea, a little bit like butterflies, and a little bit like heartburn.

“Are you for real?” he says, more because nothing else will surface from the churning mess of half-thoughts than because he thinks it’s cutting.

Roy blinks at Ed, still smiling sunnily, and then makes a big show of patting both hands on his own chest and then down his torso, which is really not helping Ed with the increasingly arduous quest to keep his mind out of the gutter.  “I… believe so.  Perhaps you are a better judge.”

Ed drains all of his remaining willpower resisting the urge to say _Do you want me to pinch you?  That’s kinda kinky_.

“You know what I meant,” Ed says.  “Get fucked.”

“I would be delighted,” Roy says, because of course he does.  “If you are offering, I would be even more delighted, and I would beg you to let me know when and where and what you—”

Back to the face-on-fire business.  At least that’s familiar.  Ed turns swiftly—probably too late to hide it, though—and starts walking briskly again.  “Hey, isn’t Oscar Wilde buried here or something?”

“I would not have thought that you were interested,” Roy says.

“Why not?” Ed says.  If he just keeps striding steadfastly forward in one direction, he’ll eventually end up somewhere.  Whether it’s anywhere he wants to be is another matter entirely, but he intends to cross that bridge when he steadfastly reaches it.  “He didn’t write any musicals, so no strikes there.  Besides, he’s one of the most iconic disaster gays of all time.  Dude’s legendary.”

Part of him wants to gauge Roy’s reaction, but most of him is working on getting out of here alive, and possibly with some fragment of dignity intact, so that has to monopolize his focus somewhat.

“I believe it is a right turn ahead,” Roy says.

It’s a little more challenging to ask questions without turning around, but also without shouting loud enough to raise the ambient dead, but Ed tries anyway: “Have you visited his grave before?”

“On a few occasions,” Roy says.  “It is… as you say.”

Ed assumes he’s referring to the legend part, rather than ‘disaster gay’, but in this case it’s the same thing.

Roy pauses at the next fork in the path, tilts his head, and then heads off towards the right.  “I hope you will not hold it against me too much if we wander aimlessly for several hours until a curator takes pity upon us.”

“Nah,” Ed says.  “It’s really pretty here.  You think we’ll see anybody else I recognize on the way?”

“Not in person, I hope,” Roy says.

“You’re sick,” Ed says.

Roy glances at him, and there’s a twist to the familiar smile.  “Unfortunately, that is true.”

“No, it’s a good thing,” Ed says.  “‘Sick’ means ‘cool’ in American English.”

Roy’s left eyebrow arches.

“I mean it,” Ed says.  “Y’know, like—‘Sick lifted wheels on your truck, bro, it _definitely_ doesn’t look like you’re compensating for anything.’  We say ‘rad’, too.  Though that’s sort of more of a California thing.”

“I see,” Roy says, sounding quite like he sees so well that he sees right through Ed’s feeble attempts to snatch that one out of the claws of faux-pas death.

“Whatever,” Ed says.  He’s well-aware that it’s not going to help his case, but it’s such a painstakingly obvious segue that at least it’ll give him the footing to shove this conversation towards another topic.  “You _do_ know where we’re going, right?”

“Yes,” Roy says, although he pauses at the next juncture, looks around, looks _up_ , and then considers the nearest tree with a thoughtfulness that is not particularly reassuring.  “It is very near to one of the other entrances, close to a different station of the Métro.  If I am able to orient myself correctly, it should not be too difficult.  If I had known you would want to see it, I would have suggested that we exit directly from that station, but of course it is all right.”

“Huh,” Ed says.  “You bring dates over there a lot?  Get ’em in the mood?”

“Only the ones who are California-‘sick’,” Roy says, perfectly calmly.  “Let us try… this way.”

“You keep making me think you know where you’re going,” Ed says, although the complaining sure doesn’t stop him from following as Roy sets off again, “and then making me think you have no idea.  Mixed messages much?”

“It is what Monsieur Wilde would want,” Roy says, and a part of Ed is absolutely furious that this asshole can be so damn glib in a second language.  “Do you not appreciate a mystery?”

“Mixed messages and mysteries aren’t the same thing,” Ed says.  “People are black boxes most of the time already.  Least they can do is try to explain themselves _sometimes_.”

“That is true,” Roy says.  “It would not be asking so much to hope for… honestness?  For people to be… outright.”

He might mean ‘forthright’, but Ed kind of likes it this way better.

“I guess I’m biased,” Ed says.  “Maybe it works for some people.  Or maybe some people just aren’t comfortable expressing how they feel.  And I guess that’s okay; it’s just…”

“It is what has brought you here,” Roy says.  “Which is a movement forward—no?  Even if it is not clearly a good thing, or a bad one, but is a mixture of the two—it is _movement_.  And that much is important for itself.”

Ed eyes him until he pauses—elegantly, it must be said, the absolute bastard—and looks back.

“I am sorry?” Roy attempts.  At least he’s learning.

“You should be this time,” Ed says.  “You talk like a self-help book.”

“Nonsense,” Roy says.  “I talk like myself.”

Ed rolls his eyes so hard that optometrists the world over probably shudder uncontrollably.  “Smartass.  You now what I mean.”

“Of course,” Roy says.  “But it is much more fun to pretend otherwise.”

“Fun for who?” Ed says.

“Are you not having fun?” Roy asks, and the shine of his grin in the tree-filtered sunlight just—

Yeah.  Ed’s hosed.

  


* * *

  


Standing in front of Oscar Wilde’s worldly remains—however much of them decomposition hasn’t devoured, anyway, somewhere beneath the tall stone monument walled off behind lipstick-printed glass—is… a lot of things.  It’s humbling, for one.  It’s terrifying, for another.  Even growing up like he did, with the shroud of death wrapped around him like a pair of loving arms—it still takes a gut-wrenching leap of cold logic to remember that no matter what he does, no matter what he makes, no matter how much he builds on this planet one brick at a time, Ed will vanish someday.  If he’s very lucky, he’ll leave something like this behind.

Roy’s voice is very soft and very respectful, and it’s too early, isn’t it, for Ed to love him for that?  It’s easy to love people for little things.  It’s easy to feel that swooning, dizzy twist of affection in the pit of your stomach over a single word or action.  It’s the rest that’s hard.  “Would you like me to take a photo of you?”

“Nah,” Ed says.  “It’s… there’ll be better pictures of it online, and… it’s not about… _me_ , really.  Just about being here.”

He manages to pry his eyes away long enough for an assessing glance at Roy, but all Roy offers is that same sweet, clever, enigmatic little smile.

Ed’s an idiot.  But at least he knows he’s an idiot, and he’s aware that he’s never had the capacity to keep his big mouth shut, so he’s cognizant of the danger he presents to himself and others.

“It’s just—it’s _big_ , you know?” he manages, looking at the makeup marks all over the glass; the geometric wings of the figure behind.  “Not the fucking tomb, I mean—the whole… thing.  The feeling.  What it is; what it means.  He and Alan Turing—I know there are millions more, but so many of them disappeared without anybody ever knowing the difference—they’re just… they were so damn _brilliant_ , and they did so _much_ , and the world completely fucking destroyed them for being who they were.  For loving who they did.  For being—the same way I am.  You know?  For just trying to exist.  Which is fucking hard enough.  And it just—it kills me.  It’s… on their own, they inspire me to just… do better, do _more_ , make stuff, give it away to people, but it fucking pisses me off, too.  Just makes me want to fight back.  Makes me want to fight so hard they _can’t_ take me down.  Makes me want to tear this place apart and _make_ them understand.”

“I think,” Roy says, very softly, and his hand rises, hesitates, catches Ed’s shoulder, and squeezes tight; “that it is very probable you will.  I have studied some statistics, you know.  I would bet very much on you.”

That wrings a smile out of Ed in spite of himself, at least.  “Thanks, I think.”

Roy squeezes again, releases, and steps back, pushing his hands into his pockets.  “Please.  Take your time.  There is nowhere else I would want to be.”

That’s got to be a trick of translation.

Doesn’t it?

  


* * *

  


“So,” Ed says.  “What’s next on the Goth Tour of Paris agenda?  You get us a dinner reservation at a restaurant where a bunch of people were murdered in the year 1905?”

“I had not,” Roy says, “although of course there is still time to alter our plan, such that—”

“No,” Ed says.  “I’m not buying it.  Not even you could pull a restaurant like that out of your ass.”

“Are you sure?" Roy asks.  “Perhaps my ass offers more space th—”

“Don’t _even_ ,” Ed says.  “I know how to calculate volume, and I’ve—”

He stops short—mid-syllable, mid-sound, mid-breath, mid-thought—but of course it is far, far too late to retract the beginning of a statement about how he’s spent enough time staring at Roy’s ass to be absolutely mathematically positive that it cannot contain a restaurant.  Not even a food truck.

“Fuck,” he says, gracefully.  “I—never mind.  Did you—that never even happened.”  His face is on fire, but if he just keeps walking along this sidewalk at a slightly brisker-than-average pace, maybe he can blame it on the humidity.  “I didn’t even start that sentence.  I don’t know what sentence you’re talking about.  There was no sentence.  I don’t even know how to talk.”

“Certainly not,” Roy says, breezy as ever, although there’s a definitive trace of smugness in it now.  “I am not sure if you have ever spoken before.  Is there any type of food in particular which you would like?”

“Anything’s fine,” Ed says.  “Except for the snails and stuff, like we talked about.  Or didn’t, since I don’t talk.”  He has to pause in his brisk-striding to look around for a second, which would be more helpful for orienting himself if the had the slightest idea how to navigate around here.  “Where are we going?”

“I thought perhaps we should spot a few more landmarks,” Roy says.  “Is your brother arriving tomorrow?”

“Um,” Ed says.  They’re just starting to lose the light, so he shuffles over to stand beneath a streetlamp as he fishes his phone out and goes over to his text log.  He sent Al some pictures earlier to prove that Roy still hasn’t managed to murder him—the fact that no one in his life has yet been determined enough to accomplish that remains a mystery, but that’s a different and only tangentially-related problem—but forgot to ask about the specifics of the schedule.  He writes _Hey so when are you heading up??  Did you finish cleaning up after everybody else?_ “Not sure yet.  Y’know, normally he’s all over that kind of thing.  I hope he’s okay.”

Roy’s face is so calm and neutral—and staggeringly appealing, but that’s baseline—that it gives Ed nothing to go on as he says, “Hmm.”

Al texts back within the space of three more heartbeats, though:

_Yes!!  Tomorrow afternoon!_

Ed feels—

Relieved, and elated, and a little… disappointed.

And then, of course, nauseously guilty about the disappointment—that he could even _consider_ entertaining such a feeling for a fraction of a second, when he hasn’t seen Al in months upon months, and even a person who had somehow scrounged up the incomparable privilege to spend time with Al every single day would need to fall to their knees in gratitude for every single moment—

But it’s not that he _doesn’t_ want to see Al.  He’d never feel like that; not _ever_.  A universe couldn’t exist where the mere thought of seeing Al didn’t buoy him with comfort and delight.  Adoring Al is a fundamental facet of his existence.

It’s just that—

It means he has to let go of Roy.  Doesn’t it?  It means he has to say goodbye to this.  It means they’ll probably never see each other again.

And it’s just—

This is—

Fucking magical, honestly.  Weird and implausible and indescribable and floaty and funny and quirky and cute.  This is all of the kinds of things Ed never gets, never has, never _is_ —all of the things he always thought were reserved for other people; all of the cinematic nonsense he assumed was dressed-up lies.  This is… special.  And it’s delicate.

And it’s about to be gone.

Of course he wants to see Al—of fucking _course_ he does—but all the same—

_I think there’s a train leaving around noon so I should get in around 3 or so??_ Al writes.  Ed’s heart sinks as the text bubbles rise, and the sudden and relentless ferocity with which he hates himself for it scares him a little.  _As long as that sounds okay!_

He sets his jaw, puts on a smile, and turns the phone around, holding it out to show the screen to Roy.

Very, very gently, Roy cups Ed’s hand to steady it.

The worst part is that that tiny, tender gesture feels more intimate than most of the times Andy touched him in the days, the weeks, the _month_ before he left.  Roy is just—here.  Roy is so damn present in every last second that they spend sharing oxygen; he’s so attentive and so intent that every brush of contact between their fingertips feels significant.

“Ah,” Roy says.  “That is very good.  There will be time for him to show you many of the things that I have not.”

“Yeah,” Ed says.  Roy’s fingers part, and it’s unreal that the warmth of them felt good even in this ungodly heat.  Ed draws the phone back towards himself and types out _!!!!! of course it does you nerd!!_.

“There is also still time,” Roy says, “for a few more tonight, if you wish.”

Ed wishes a lot of things.  Sightseeing isn’t his first priority right this second, but he’s stuck with this game.  “I think I’ve got a little more touristy bullshit left in me.”

“Excellent,” Roy says.  “We are quite near.”

“Near to what?” Ed asks, but Roy starts strolling along the avenue again, and he doesn’t have much choice except to follow.

“If I told you,” Roy says, “there would not be any surprise.”

“I hate surprises,” Ed says.

“Then it is even more important that you receive this one,” Roy says, “in the hopes that it will show you they are not always bad.”

“Is it a puppy?” Ed says.  “Did you get me a puppy?”

Roy raises an eyebrow at him.

“What?” Ed says.  “That’s the only good surprise I can think of.”

“It would be very rude to give you a puppy,” Roy says.  “You would have to pay extra to bring it on the plane.  Your puppy would be scared.  I do not know if you are able to have puppies in your home.  That would be a terrible surprise.”

Ed tries very, very hard to keep a straight face.  “How about a unicorn?  Then I wouldn’t have to take the plane in the first place; I could just fly home on the unicorn instead.”

Roy frowns, gaze on the sidewalk ahead of them.  “Is it not the case that the only people who can travel upon a unicorn are virgins?”

Ed chokes on his own spit and very nearly dies in a gutter in Paris after all.

“I am sorry,” Roy says, but the way he’s gingerly patting Ed’s back—which is not even remotely helpful for clearing the saliva from Ed’s windpipe; and which is, in fact, making it harder to breathe for a different reason altogether—does not seem especially apologetic.  “I did not mean to… imply… I thought merely that if _I_ had been in a relationship with you for several months, then it would surely—but of course if you are not inclined towards—”

“Shut your mouth,” Ed wheezes.  “This had better be good.”

  


* * *

  


It is, of course, impossible to miss the import of a giant windmill lit up in red and orange.

The music blaring from everywhere at once sure doesn’t hurt.

“I thought it would be good for you to see it,” Roy says.  “Although if you would like to go to one of the shows, they are… there are several that are just as good, but cost very much less, at some other… what is it—do you also say ‘cabaret’?”

“Man,” Ed says, pulling out his phone and trying to frame up the sign.  “Winry’s gonna kill me.  She had ‘Moulin Rouge’ on a loop for months after the movie came out on DVD.”

Roy has his hands in his pockets and a faint smile on his face.  He’s standing two inches closer than he ought to be if this were purely platonic.  Isn’t he?  “Were you made to watch it?”

“Well,” Ed says.  “When it first came out, she had this big house party where she forced everybody to dress up and stuff, but I pretended to come down sick.  Al backed me up.  He’s a much better liar than I am, but he’s so cute that everybody always assumes he must be telling the truth, so they believe him.”

“Devious,” Roy says.

“Yeah,” Ed says.  He thinks he has the shot, weird night lighting aside.  “I don’t know if I’ve got a show left in me, though.  My feet are starting to kill me.”  He can’t help wincing.  “And my wallet.”

“That is perfectly all right,” Roy says, instead of _Well, it’s not my fault that having fun costs money; why do you have to be so cheap?_ “Perhaps a very brief walk through, and then the Métro to return?”

“Sure,” Ed says.  All the neon and noise is pretty mesmerizing, albeit in a brain-overwhelming kind of way.  “What do you wanna eat?”

He glances over at Roy as he finishes the sentence, and in the moment where Roy pauses, eyes wide, lips pursed—

He is completely fucking positive for a long, full second that Roy is going to say _You_.

But then the electricity of it dissipates, and Roy’s gaze drifts up to the lights above and behind his face, and Roy says, very casually, “If it is… if it would be acceptable for you, I had thought perhaps we could cook something back at my apartment.”

Ed’s head understands that that is a very practical solution to several of the proposed problems to do with tiredness and financial strain.

His heart, however, starts pounding so hard that he can’t hear the ambient music for a minute.

“I thought you said that you burn everything you cook,” he says.

“When I am unattended,” Roy says, so lightly that Ed almost— _almost_ —believes he doesn’t care, that he’s not invested, that he’s just bullshitting and being French.  But there’s the slightest note behind it— “But if you and your American breakfast talents are there to make sure that I do not reduce anything to ashes, then perhaps…”

“I mean,” Ed says, “that’d definitely save me some cash, so… if… you want to.  Sure.”

“Perfect,” Roy says, and it’s all blithe brightness again.  He lifts his chin a little, and the angle makes the million ambient lights glow in his eyes, and he _must_ know what he looks like.  He must know what he does.  “Are you very hungry yet?”

“I’m always very hungry,” Ed says.  “But if there’s stuff you really wanna do—”

“Only one stuff,” Roy says.  “Or—what is the singular, of ‘stuff’?”

“There isn’t any,” Ed says.  “But it’s also a verb.”

Roy’s expression encapsulates disproportionate despair.  “It… but why?”

“Because English is a language constructed on borrowed words, backwards tenses, and fucking spite,” Ed says.  “What was the thing you wanted to do?”

“I enjoy sometimes,” Roy says, gesturing meaninglessly towards the flocks of people milling back and forth, “just to walk the length of the street and listen.  There are so many languages, and so much music.  A great many different kinds.  Would you mind if…?”

Roy is so glib and so generous that Ed usually forgets the other thing he is: a soldier who has been away from his home, and his life, and a city that he loves, for months on end.

“Of course not,” Ed says, which is true.  He adds, “That sounds kinda fun,” which is not; and then “I’ll follow your lead,” which is again.

Roy’s eyes light up, and then he grins, and then he holds out a hand—

Ed’s fool enough to take it.

There’s music, sure—vague, swirling strains of jazz or something like it emanating out of one of the nearest doorways.  Ed can’t even really hear the rhythm of it, but Roy’s whole body shifts and then starts _swinging_ —

God.  He’s a good dancer.  He’s a _really_ good dancer.  Ed wants to die, and also to live forever, as long as it’s spent right here.

Roy’s fingers are so warm around Ed’s, and his body moves like it’s part of the night—like smoke, like water, with a panther’s grace and confidence.  He knows he’s the best show out here tonight.  He knows he’s the finest thing the City of Light has got to offer.

But he’s here.

He’s giving it to _Ed_.

Ed, stumbling to keep up; Ed, flushed and clumsy and tongue-tied and utterly overwhelmed by how gorgeous Roy is against the silhouetted crowds and the flare of neon lights and the vibrancy of the whole world around them in this instant.  Ed, so fucking in _love_ after less than _two days_ ; Ed, knowing it’s stupid; knowing it’s a lie; knowing it’s not even possible—knowing he _isn’t_ , not _really_ ; knowing he’s only believing it in this instant because everything’s so beautiful, and he wants to feel like he deserves that, just this once.

Roy sashays backwards without even looking—smooth, easy steps; it doesn’t matter what the tempo is of the music around them, because Ed’s heartbeat keeps syncing up with his feet.  Roy tugs gently on Ed’s captive hand, and he lets himself be drawn in, and then follows the twist of Roy’s wrist to twirl him on his toes—once, twice, as if he’s just not quite dizzy enough—

He misses his footing a little, staggers to try to catch himself, fails, slips—

And Roy’s other arm wraps around his waist to steady him, but the only way to get the leverage is to pull him in close—

And there they are—standing under a streetlamp, arms tangled around each other, breathing too fast.  Ed’s blood seethes; his brain spins, sputters; he stares up at Roy and can’t help wondering if maybe—

If maybe Roy feels some tiny fraction of it, too.

If maybe it’s not all wacked-out, jacked-up hormones and retributive rage twisting something ordinary into a fragment of a fairy tale; if it’s not just Ed’s worn-out, wrung-dry, battered little heart projecting what he thinks he wants onto the world in front of him.

Roy releases a slow breath, and with their chests pressed together like this, Ed can feel the way it shakes—just slightly.

But slightly’s something.

You can’t fall in love in two days—not for real; not if you’re serious about it; not in any way that matters.

But you can fall into something good.  And if last night wasn’t some sort of sleep-deprived, travel-overloaded fever dream—

If the way Roy’s eyes keep flicking down to Ed’s mouth and lingering and then dragging slowly upward to meet his gaze again—

If the way they fucking _smolder_ is any indication—

Well, hell.  Ed’s been a gambler most of his life for reasons that were entirely beyond his control.  What’s one more roll of the dice over something that he _wants_ , for once?

If he’s careful—if he moves his hands very slowly, very gradually, inch by inch and instant by instant—Roy’s more than smart enough to figure out what he’s looking for, and if Roy’s not feeling it, he’ll have ample opportunity to pull away.

When his cautiously-creeping fingertips touch the nape of Roy’s neck, Roy fucking _shivers_ —not the kind that telegraphs revulsion.  A shiver that ripples through his whole frame, rattles right through Ed’s—

A hot one.  A tight one.  One that makes Roy arch his back, which seals his body against Ed’s—

His eyelashes dip, and he tilts his head and lowers it, shoulders shifting under Ed’s crooked arm, leaning into the contact.

Fuck it.  In any universe, that’s got to be good enough.

Ed pushes up onto his toes to fit their mouths together.

The music and the crowd noise still pour out around them, but it feels like the world has isolated the pair of them in this one tiny pocket of perfect warmth.  Roy is an even better kisser when he isn’t half-asleep, which is honestly pretty distressing, because Ed’s knees and constitution can only take so much.

This time, Roy is fearless and shameless in equal measure—there’s a desperation to the twist of his tongue that makes Ed’s heart skitter, makes his blood roar in his ears so loud that he forgets about Paris and the people and the heat—

One of Roy’s hands settles on his waist, palm open, fingers spread, skin against Ed’s like a firebrand; the other drifts up to wrap itself around Ed’s elbow, like he just wants to fix them there, tangled up around each other, for the rest of time.

Roy’s teeth dig gently into his lower lip and ground him in the kiss again—and _what_ a fucking _kiss_ ; what an excruciatingly spectacular convergence of skill and sweetness and lascivious implication.  What a masterwork.  What an absolute fucking inspiration.

It’s not that every other kiss of Ed’s life has been boring or bad or something—some of them were really good.  But they were really good insofar as they were about an eight on a ten-scale.

This takes _good_ to an astronomical level.  This is a cosmic kind of good.  This is constellations spinning in the center of Ed’s chest, burning bright, with his heart at the core and his fingertips tingling and his mouth and his nerves and his skin awash and aflame and ablaze with the sheer fucking _majesty_ of Roy’s undivided devotion.

This is heaven for atheists, and he never wants to come back down.

And Roy’s—

Hungry.  Roy’s grip on him keeps tightening gradually and then relaxing again all at once, like Roy realizes what he’s done and forces himself to fight his instincts.  Roy’s breath keeps ghosting quick and hot and unsteady against his cheek, just this side of panting outright; Roy keeps making these low, faint, hardly-audible, spine-curlingly primal growls and whines in the back of his throat, like a needy dog—

Ed doesn’t figure anyone can fake that.

At this point, he isn’t sure he cares.

He wants this.

He wants more.

He wants _everything_.

And that’s the danger, isn’t it?  Edward Elric doesn’t get to grab for things; Edward Elric doesn’t get to wrap his hands around anything without it turning into mist.  Ed is a winner of battles and a loser of things—of people, of wishes, of wistful little dreams.  Ed is a failure at dragging fantasies to life.

What the hell is he going to do if he actually gets what he wants?  It’ll be like chasing his own tail and catching it; like waking from a dream he thought he knew was real and trying to figure out which direction’s up all over again.  How is he supposed to handle that?

Somehow the next breath works itself between them, and their mouths part, and Ed feels lightheaded and… light everywhere, honestly.  Like everything in him has drastically decreased in density all at once, and none of it remembers how to stay put in his body where it belongs.

He hears himself swallow hard, and then he presses his lips together, which brings it directly and immediately to his attention that the lips in question are very wet, and all of the nerves in them are still piqued as _hell_.

He can’t stop staring at Roy’s mouth, which looks even better all reddened and gleaming damp like this.  He shouldn’t stare, though; that’s rude.  He forces himself to look at something else, but he ends up gazing into Roy’s eyes, and that’s a helping and a half too much romancey bullshit; he can’t _possibly_ —

“Ah,” Roy says.  He raises his hand, hesitates, and then reaches forward.

Ed couldn’t move if he wanted to; none of his limbs are responding to brain signals.  And—shit.  He doesn’t want to.  He doesn’t care if he stays rooted to the spot here until he starves, as long as Roy’s right there with him.

Roy’s fingers thread themselves into his hair for a second before they gently guide a section back behind his ear.  Somehow his skin’s still capable of prickling when Roy’s fingertips graze over the shell of his ear like that.

“You are,” Roy says, sounding almost puzzled, “so… very extraordinary.”

“Shut up,” Ed says.  “Look who’s talking.”

“I was,” Roy says.  “You were talking.  Although before that, there was not very much talking at all.”

Ed wants to say something scintillatingly witty—something so magnificently clever, so staggeringly smart, that Roy will sink down onto both knees and swear not to give up on him.  Something brilliant enough to earn the way Roy keeps looking at him, the things Roy keeps saying no matter how weirdly Ed responds—

Nothing in particular comes to mind.  Roy has such stupid, beautiful eyelashes.  Paris continues bustling around them, and music plays, and the lights flash and flicker and pan back and forth, and Ed’s ribcage doesn’t feel big enough to hold this moment in its entirety.

“Um,” he says.  “Dinner?”

Roy smiles.  His fingertips dapple for a split-second against the side of Ed’s neck, and then his hand slips away and darts back into his pocket.

“Yes,” he says.

  


* * *

  


The Métro ride back towards Roy’s place is a bit… weird.  Neither of them seems to know exactly how close together they should sit, and then they both end up standing for a while, but it’s hard to tell how much space they should leave between themselves for that, too.  But at least Ed’s humiliating struggle to reach the overhead bar with the handles—which leaves him spitting curses under his breath—makes Roy smile more genuinely than he has in several minutes.  Roy then flashes an only slightly subdued version of the knock-you-on-your-ass grin and offers his arm, and Ed gets to roll his eyes and make a point of ignoring him and hooking an elbow around one of the vertical supports—and then makes a point of caressing it lovingly, which wrings a laugh out of Roy that sounds ever so slightly relieved.  That seems to settle them both a bit, and at least a little bit of the awkward tension seeps back out of Ed’s shoulders, and… 

And he’s completely off-script here.  What the hell is supposed to happen when they get back to Roy’s apartment?  How is he supposed to act?  What is he supposed to _do_?

Nothing for it but to find out, though.  Ain’t that always the way?


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who was wondering about the German for "sort-of-no-longer-quite-strangers" after last chapter, SessyFuchs totally came through with [the answer](https://archiveofourown.org/comments/243068059). :D Now we can all have that in our back pocket!!! (Yes, I _am_ super fun at parties. XD)
> 
> There are serious preludes to NSFW-ness in this chapter, so please be forewarned if that is not your jam! ♥ Sorry for the weird place it cuts off; I didn't have it in me to edit the rest of this scene tonight. ;A; More soon, and I swear I'm going to finish out that Loud and Clear update that's been stalled for weeks now, OTL
> 
> P.S. IT'S [ROY/ED WEEK](https://royedweek2019.tumblr.com/post/186936964587/its-time) AAAAAAAA

Idle conversation carries them up to Roy’s building, into the elevator, and most of the way down the hall, but then it’s time to face the music.  Ed likes this music even less than the blaring background noise that hounded them up and down the street near the Moulin Rouge, but he doesn’t have much choice.

“So what are we making?” he asks as Roy lets them in.

“That depends on what we bought last night,” Roy says, “which I am now needing to confess that I do not remember at all.”

“Me neither,” Ed says.

Roy crosses to the fridge, opens it, and pauses.  “Perhaps… _un peu de sauté_.  I believe you have a word.  Or two words?”

Ed steels himself against the urge to hesitate and goes to join him.  Leaving two inches between their arms is a reasonable distance for two people who have made out twice and never talked about it, right?  He doesn’t have a whole lot of experience in this department.  “Uh… stir-fry?”

“Yes,” Roy says.  “Two verbs together.  This is very English.”

“But is it French?” Ed says.  “Like—is it French enough to cook here, or will the kitchen collapse on us to try to stop us?”

“Any meal can be French,” Roy says, reaching in to collect the perilous produce.  “One must only drink wine with it, and then it is exceedingly French, and the kitchen will be safe.”  He draws a knife out of the block and offers the handle.  “May I trouble you to assist me?”

“You’d better,” Ed says, taking it.  “I don’t have it in me to stand around and watch somebody else make me food.”

“Well,” Roy says, all-too-casually reaching up to snag a cutting board from a higher shelf, in a typical display of tall-person privilege; “I was not precisely planning to make food for you _only_ , but if you are hungry enough to eat two portions, then it might perhaps be better to orde—”

“I can’t believe you said that _after_ you handed me the knife,” Ed says.  “You’ve got guts; I’ll give you that.”

“I have a good quantity of them,” Roy says, busying himself with organizing the vegetables in the vain hopes that Ed won’t notice that he’s trying not to grin.  “And I should very much like to keep them on the inside, please.”

“Huh,” Ed says, making a point of examining the edge on his knife.  He should probably at least rinse this thing if it’s been sitting in the knife block for six months, but that can wait until after the melodrama.  “In that case, maybe you should keep your tongue on the inside of your mouth, instead of talkin’ all kinds of shit.”

Roy looks at him.

He looks back.

Roy presses his lips together hard, but Ed still ends up laughing first, which really isn’t very fair.

  


* * *

  


Ed knew from the start that it was inevitable, but _inevitable_ almost never means _easy_.

Roy lifts two wineglasses down from a cabinet, the stems between his fingers, with the effortless, practiced, fluid deftness of a sommelier, and they give the tiniest little chime as he sets them on the countertop next to the gently-steaming stir fry.

“May I tempt you?” he asks.  “I have… several varieties.  A large ‘several’.  What is your favorite?”

“Um,” Ed says, looking intently at the wineglasses, which is easier than looking at Roy.  “So… full disclosure, I guess—what I said before about not drinking stuff unless it’s free was… I mean, true, but also sort of—misleading.  I don’t drink because I _can’t_.  Not really, anyway.  ’Cause—well, long story really, really short, Al needed a kidney, and then he needed part of a liver, and then mine was supposed to grow back and be all chill, but it decided to be an asshole and didn’t do it quite right, so… yeah.  And I wreck both it and the kidney with enough ibuprofen and acetaminophen on a regular basis that I… just… like, the doctors never _told_ me I’ll keel over if I throw ethanol into the mix, or anything, but it just doesn’t seem worth it, and—”

“I am so sorry,” Roy says.

“I mean, it was a long time ago,” Ed says.  “And it’s not like kidneys have a whole lot of personality, so I don’t really miss mine, or anything.”

He chances a glance, and Roy is blinking.  “I… was… referring more to… I—yes.  For that.  But also for… I did not know, but I should not have assumed.  I hope I did not—what is it that you say—press you?  I hope I was not seeming to demand of you.  I did not mean…”

“No, no,” Ed says helplessly.  “It didn’t feel like you were pressuring me at all.  You’re fine.  I mean—obviously you’re fine; anybody with eyeballs knows you’re fine.  You’re—good.  You didn’t do anything wrong.  It’s just that it’s so nice of you to offer, and I feel bad for deliberately being all vague about it before, and I wish I could take you up on it, but—”

“Forgive me,” Roy says, and he picks up both the glasses again, which— “I should have thought to ask before.  It is—ungenerous.  May I offer—”

“Hold up,” Ed says, but Roy hasn’t paused, which leaves him no choice except to reach out and grab onto Roy’s wrist to stop him from shelving the glasses again.  “I didn’t say _you_ couldn’t drink.  Just that I can’t.  And it doesn’t bother me, or anything; and you didn’t do or say anything wrong; and if we just stand here and argue about it, the food’s gonna get cold, and we put a _lot_ of work into that, so can you just pour yourself a glass and be all French about it already?”

Roy pauses now.

He blinks.

He tilts his head like a puppy, damn him to hell.

“‘Be all French about it’?” he says.  “I am… how do I accomplish this?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ed says.  “You’re a natural.”

He realizes he’s still gripping Roy’s wrist and tries to make releasing it seem casual and normal instead of indescribably awkward.

Roy’s grimace doesn’t indicate in the slightest whether Roy even noticed the dilemma Ed was having about hanging off his wrist.  “Is… that… I suppose I must admit it makes sense if my undertaking to ‘be all French’ is natural, insofar as I _am_ all French, or at least a native, but I—”

“This is exactly why you need a glass of wine,” Ed says.  “Calm down.  It’s okay.  C’mon, let’s eat; I’m hungry.”

“You are so many things,” Roy says.  He reaches up again, moving to place the second wineglass on the shelf, and then hesitates.  “You could… what would you like to drink?  There is no harm in using the… these regardless.”

“I guess,” Ed says.  “Um—whatever you’ve got.  Water is fine.  Tap water is fine.  It builds character.”

Roy raises an eyebrow at him, goes back into the fridge, pointedly extracts a plastic bottle of water, opens it, and pours enough to fill one of the wineglasses.

“C’mon,” Ed says.  “You just wasted, like, three Euro, and also a bunch of plastic.”

“I will add it to my schedule for this week to shed a tear for my wasteful choice,” Roy says, holding the glass out to him.  “Shall we be eating, then?”

Scarfing food sounds marginally safer than just standing here in the kitchen marveling all over again at how every single kind of light that the universe sees fit to foster makes Roy look gorgeous and dramatic.  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  


* * *

  


It takes a bit more wheedling, but in the end Ed manages to convince Roy to open up a fancy-labeled bottle for himself while they wolf down the fruits of their collective labors.  Ed thinks it’s probably politest all around not to comment on how fast Roy goes through said bottle once he cracks it open—one carefully-cradled, gently-swilled glass leads into another, and then another, and in a weird way it’s sort of sweet how Roy’s shoulders relax as the alcohol runs through him.  His eyes brighten, and his movements turn languid, and his laugh gets easier—and… lower.  Deeper.  Ever so slightly rough, and more than a little bit… thrilling.

They’re eating on the couch, which Ed should have known out of the gate was a mistake.  It’s way, way too easy to slide closer to someone on a couch—way, way too easy to shift a little; to let the cushion dip beneath you; to reconfigure your legs purportedly for the sake of comfort and look up to find yourself inches away.  It’s way too easy to pass it off as an accident.

Is he taking advantage?  It’s not like Roy’s smashed—he’s barely edging past the tipsy mark, as far as Ed can tell, although admittedly he doesn’t have much other data about Roy and liquor volume to use to estimate the real effect despite Roy’s remarkable talent for playing it cool.  But it’s still… it just doesn’t seem right to insert himself into someone’s personal space when they’re in a happy little substance-induced haze, and their reflexes are slow, and their inhibitions are dulled, and he could get away with doing things that aren’t actually wanted or welcome.

Then again, on the inhibitions front, Roy just put his empty plate down on the table and his open hand on Ed’s knee.

Knee could mean a lot of things, though.  It could be sort of… chummy.  Companionable.  Contact with an area of the body that’s more bone and less nerve endings, and therefore less directly sensitive to tactile stimulation, could indicate a familial sort of sympathetic intention.  It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.  Ed needs to calm his raring heart the fuck down.  Roy might just be trying to get his attention; Roy might just want to confide something personal but platonic; Roy might—

Roy might watch Ed’s face very closely while he runs the pad of his thumb lightly back and forth along the inside of Ed’s thigh.

Ed feels like he’s under the gun and pinned by the headlights, but the pounding of his heart is _exhilarating_.

Roy looks down at his hand and then blinks at it, as if it has done something unauthorized and rather confusing.  “Ah.  I—am sorry.  I—”

“I’m not,” Ed says.

Roy pauses.  His eyes flick up to Ed’s face.  Ed raises an eyebrow.

“No?” Roy says, hand still against Ed’s knee now.

“Not even a little bit,” Ed says.

Roy watches him intently for another second—but doesn’t withdraw his hand.  “I should… I ought to have asked.  It is not…”

“I think we’re there, Roy,” Ed says.  “Or—I mean—shit.  Okay.  The band-aid’s coming off.  Did last night—did that happen?”

“I hope it did not,” Roy says.  “I was… I should be embarrassed.  Even if you do have the most beautiful hair of anyone I think I have ever seen.”

Ed is definitely not blushing hot and hard right now, because that would be stupid, and he’s done enough stupid shit already on this trip.  He’s surpassed the quota.  There’s got to be a cap somewhere.  “That… sort of sounded like a ‘yes’.  Okay, so—I mean—”

“Tonight happened,” Roy says.  “Tonight I can and will most happily confirm.”

Ed keeps swallowing, but his throat persists in drying out again immediately after every attempt to dampen it.  “I—yeah.  No, I was—pretty sure about that one.  Just—”

“Did you… ah.”  Roy’s eyelashes dip; he angles his head to the side in that terrible, wonderful, thoughtful-puppyish way he does— “You were… you did enjoy it, I hope?  Or at least it was not… I was not—”

“Jesus Christ,” Ed says.  “Do people who aren’t enjoying it usually stick their tongue right back down your throat?  ’Cause I’m pretty sure I did.  For, like, at least a couple of minutes.”

Roy’s sly half-smile makes his stomach flip.  Roy’s hand is still resting on his knee.  “That sort of sounded like a ‘yes’.”

“Fuck off,” Ed says.

Roy blinks a bit more vigorously and pulls his hand away.

“No!” Ed says.  “Not—like— _fuck off_ , fuck off; just—I was—”

“Ah,” Roy says.  Sometimes Ed wonders if that’s the only interjection that he knows; sometimes Ed wonders if he realizes the way that the utterance of it curls up the corner of his mouth just slightly and draws Ed’s eyes right to it.  “I… think… that I…” 

He raises his hand again—higher this time, and closer; and the tip of his middle finger settles under Ed’s chin, and—

He applies a negligible amount of force, but Ed instinctively tilts his head up, which shortens his breath, which makes his heart bang harder—

He knows—

Better.

What he wants.

What this is.

That they’re not the same; that they _can’t_ be the same; that their edges don’t even overlap.  That it looks like a Venn diagram from a distance, but really they’re just—separate spheres.  Worlds apart.  He’s squinting trying to see what he’s hoping for, and his brain and his eyes together are playing tricks.

He’s not sure he can take that shit right now.

He swallows one more time, and Roy’s gaze darts to the movement of his throat, and somehow he finds it within himself to choke out, “Hold up.  Wait.”

And Roy—

Roy, despite the wine and the searing sexual tension—

Immediately lowers his hand, shifts back, and lets out a deep breath softly.

“I am sorry,” he says, yet again.  “I—thought—I thought that perhaps if—”

“No,” Ed says.  “It’s not—that.  It’s just—I don’t—yeah, we’ve had two—really great days, but I just—I don’t— _know_ you.  And you don’t know me.  And I’m gonna be five thousand miles away in a couple of days.  And I just—came off that whole—thing with Andy, and I don’t think it’s a good idea.  For—either of us.  I mean, you’re probably… you…”

He can’t say _You’re just so fucking lonely right now.  That’s the only reason you’d settle for me_.  You can’t be rude and accusatory like that when you’re sitting on the couch of someone who just fed you for free.

“Of course I do not know everything,” Roy says.  He folds his arm and rests his elbow on the back of the couch, which emphasizes his perfect fucking shoulders, and Ed’s not positive he’ll survive this.  “And I have not seen… I have not yet had time to discover many of the parts of you—the sides, and the… attitudes.  But it is… because of… the way that we have spent this time, I think we have… how do you say?  Skipped to the important parts.  At least to some of them.  Some of the most significant chapters, I think I have read.”

“Yeah?” Ed says.  Not staring at the slightest gleam of sweat on Roy’s collarbones is monopolizing his willpower, which makes it harder to speak.  “Prove it.”

“You are very much practiced at keeping other people at the length of your arm, no?” Roy says.  “Because if they are held this far, then they are not able to reach you…” He extends his arm, and of course—of _course_ —lays a fingertip on Ed’s sternum that sends electric nerve signals catapulting around through the rest of his body all at once.  “…here.”

Ed swallows and tries at a smirk, which is pretty damn difficult when his endocrine system is going haywire at one fucking touch.  “It’s a whole hell of a lot easier than trying to accumulate enough evidence to determine on an individual basis whether every single person that I meet can be trusted or not.”

“I know,” Roy says, so softly that Ed has no choice but to believe that he actually means it.  “But it means… you do not know what to do, if anyone makes it past the defenses.  No?  You are used to keeping people at this distance, and so you have not learned how to stop them from hurting you if they do make it in so close.  And so they can.  And they do.  And it is very deep, when they hurt you; and you think it is your own fault for not having had them—” He flattens his hand on Ed’s chest and shifts back, locking his elbow.  Arm’s length.

“Shut up,” Ed says, although his throat doesn’t seem to get the memo that he intended to argue this calmly and steadily.  “So fucking what?  Life’s like that, and then you die and decompose and maybe end up in a cemetery somewhere.  If you’re lucky.  And people walk all over your grave and say weird shit, like we did today.  Who c—”

“You had your guard down,” Roy says.  The pad of his thumb slides up over the edge of Ed’s collar and settles in the hollow between his collarbones.  Ed can feel his pulse beating against Roy’s skin; it feels… premonitory, too-important— “When we met.  You were distracted.  You were already hurting, from what had been done.  So you forgot to hold me away.  And you are scared, now—of where I am, how close, and of what I could do.”

The worst thing is that Roy will be able to _feel_ that his heart-rate intensifies.  “It’s not—don’t flatter yourself; I don’t—it’s not that big a deal, and anyway it’s irrelevant, ’cause—”

“I will not hurt you,” Roy says.

Ed’s stupid mouth reacts before his stupid brain: “You don’t know that.  You _can’t_ know that.”

“I know that you are precious,” Roy says.  “I know that anyone who could not see this, who could not appreciate it—anyone who would not try with all of their strength to make _you_ see it—was a fool, and was never deserving you in the first place.”  He lifts a hand, brushes the backs of his knuckles so lightly against Ed’s bangs that the sensation barely registers at all—faint and fallible, like a phantom prickle of a pull against his scalp.  “I do not know if I am deserving either, but I know that I will try.”

“Idiot,” Ed says weakly.  “It’s not— _you_.  It’s the fucking leaving.  It’s having to leave you behind when you’re—like _this_ , and—”

“I have always felt that I am waiting,” Roy says.  “For something—or for someone.  Who is to say it is not you I have been waiting for?”

“Statistics,” Ed says through the giant, nasty, swollen, miserable knot in his throat.  “And pragmatism.  And… and please don’t tell me you actually are into some, like, spiritualistic psychic stuff after all.  Just—don’t.”

Roy laughs, the absolute and unrepentant bastard.  “I am not trying to say I am seeing the future, _mon cher réaliste_.”  At the grimace Ed makes, he reaches out and brushes Ed’s bangs out of his eyes, still smiling—but softer now.

That’s the worst part—the softness.  That’s what they kill you with, and you never expect it, and in the long run it hurts so much more.

“I am trying to say,” Roy says, “that I see _you_.”

“I can’t,” Ed says, and his whole ribcage rings with it.  “I don’t have it in me.  It’s not—it’s really not you.  It’s that I know—I _know_ —I’m fucking rebounding.  This all started with revenge.  It did.  And that’s not—me.  I can’t just jump into something like this knowing that there’s a part of it that’s _petty_ like that; that’s not fair.  That’s not fair to you.  You’re—really fucking amazing, and I don’t want to treat you like that, and I don’t want you waking up tomorrow and regretting it; and I don’t want _me_ waking up tomorrow and just being like, ‘Okay, ’bye’; and I don’t want either of us realizing later that it was just a stupid angry hormone bullshit thing; and—”

“You can be worrying about what you want tomorrow when tomorrow arrives,” Roy says softly.  “What do you want at this moment?”

The depth of his eyes demands honesty, and Ed is running out of last resorts.

“You,” Ed chokes out.  “So _fucking_ bad.”

Roy’s fingertips graze his cheek, his jaw—it shouldn’t be so sensual; shouldn’t be so fucking electrifying; shouldn’t be so intense; shouldn’t send lightning coursing down his nerves and an answering shudder up his spine.  Surely that proves that he’s just desperate.  Surely that demonstrates that it’s just a physical thing; that it’s all heat and motion, and tomorrow there’s going to be nothing but awkward apologies and a sick twist in his stomach and Al knowing the _instant_ he sees Ed’s face—

“What is so wrong with that?” Roy murmurs, and his willpower quails.

“Nothing,” Ed says.  “I mean—not—” He can’t help leaning into Roy’s hand.  He knows he shouldn’t; he knows that’s a mixed damn message for the records books, but— “We only ever talk about me.  What do _you_ want?”

“Well,” Roy says softly, and a flash of mischief dances in his eyes, and Ed’s guts drop all over again; “I have dreamed of being this near to you since when I saw you on the train.  I dreamed it very much more once I discovered how you are in your personality, in addition to having such pretty hair.”

At least blushing hotly draws a fair amount of blood into Ed’s face—and therefore away from some of the other places that it might collect.

“Whatever,” he says.  “My hair is _way_ beside the point, and anyway—I don’t know if—”

Roy leans in, tucking Ed’s hair back behind his ear to expose it all the more entirely to the warmth of Roy’s mouth as his lips graze the shell, and he whispers—

“Just this once, why not let yourself have the thing that you want?”

“You’re not a thing,” Ed says, squeezing his eyes shut in the feeble hope that blocking out a stimulus or two will help him get through this.  “You’re a person.  You’re a _great_ person.  You’re the whole package, you fucker.  And I’m not—that’s not—casual.  Or at least it’s not to me.”

Roy breathes in and out once each—slowly, quietly, and Ed sets his jaw and braces himself to get ejected from the whole damn apartment and have to go scrounge up a hostel after all for a single night.  He hopes it’ll be easier with his eyes closed, but the rational part of him—

“All right,” Roy says softly.  “I hope… may I…?”

Ed cracks an eye open.

Roy gestures in a way that isn’t particularly indicative and then slides his arm partway around Ed’s shoulders in a way that definitely is.

Holy fuck.  Holy fucking _hell_.  Ed just turned _Roy Mustang_ down for sex and is now being asked for cuddles as a consolation prize.

Paris just isn’t real.  France exists in some strange, topsy-turvy, upside-down alternate universe where everything’s backwards, and the logic that normally rules Ed’s world turns itself completely inside-out.

“Yeah,” he says, stupidly, because nothing else whatsoever will come to mind.  “’Course.  Um—”

He was already aware that Roy is a man of a great many talents, but it’s only now that he’s realizing that an instantaneous and very convincing impression of a limpet is among them.  Apparently, Roy does not fuck around in the slightest when it comes to physical displays of affection of any variety, because there is no pussyfooting or hesitation anywhere in sight as he wraps both arms around Ed’s torso tightly and then proceeds to bury his face in Ed’s neck.

The really terrible thing is that in spite of the heat, the humidity, the sweat, the drained exhaustion, and all the other hallmarks of weather-related misery, it’s… wonderful.  It should be disgustingly too-warm, but instead it’s cozy and comforting and devastatingly sweet.  It is a little sticky-gross, but somehow just on the kinder side of off-putting, and… that’s not fair.  Yes, Ed’s known since he was about four that theirs is a vast world overflowing with untold injustices, but this just isn’t… _fair_.  Someone needs to call a time-out and have a long, serious talk with the forces governing Ed’s existence.

Roy releases a contented little sigh.  Ed can’t even see his mouth at this angle and is nonetheless so preoccupied with how beautiful he knows it is that he can’t think about anything else at all.  He’s always been of the mind—Al would cut in here to add _For reasons that are both self-evident and self-explanatory_ —that the size of things is much less important than what you accomplish with them, and Roy has made it abundantly clear that that mouth is a deadly weapon.

Ed doubts he has a permit for it.  Everywhere in the world has stricter gun control regulations than the U.S.; probably it’s a pain in the ass and a half to get properly licensed for a piece like that.

Despite the niggling little fragment of him whispering _If it was that easy to talk him out of it, it must not have mattered in the first place_ , the position they’re in now is so soothing that he finds himself relaxing, and the whirl of his thoughts starts to slow.  Tentatively, he leans his head on Roy’s, and then Roy lets out another soft breath that just sounds so calm that it settles him, too.  Roy’s hair smells fucking wonderful.  The way Roy has twisted his torso to octopus his way around Ed looks like the sort of thing that ought to hurt, but it seems like he’s nailed the one angle that’s comfortable, which is so _like_ him that Ed’s not really too surprised.

Worse still is the opportunity this affords him to stroke his hand down the length of Roy’s back.  It’s just so fucking gorgeous—planes and angles and shoulder-blades and hard muscle tantalizingly accessible under his open palm.  He can’t help pressing his fingertips in against one of the little knots at the base of Roy’s neck and rubbing a little, which earns him a soft, faint, categorically pornographic little groan.

Shit.

“You still want to fuck, don’t you?” he asks, whether or not that’s well past courting danger and on into the part where danger agrees to elope.

“Yes,” Roy murmurs.

Does he mean that, though?  So much gets lost in translation to start with, and Ed can only imagine what else dwindles and disappears into the space between what Roy thinks and what he says out loud in a second language.  If it was really, y’know, urgent—if Roy really _wanted_ him, badly, deeply, with the kind of gut-tightening fervency with which Ed wants him—he wouldn’t have conceded so easily.  Right?

“But very much more,” Roy says, and he loosens one of the arms wrapped around Ed just enough to chafe a hand up and down Ed’s side, “I want for you to be… happy.  I know perhaps that is too much—that is too much to ask for.  I am still almost a stranger you met on the train, and perhaps I should not even think about these things.  In the largeness of a life, a moment like this is very small.  But I want to give you what I can.  And I want you to begin the day tomorrow with no regrets.  That is most important to me.”

Ed doesn’t want to think too much about the larger psychological implications of the fact that this, now—sprawled out on the couch, draped all over him, holding on but not clutching _too_ tight, gentle and honest and utterly trusting; like he knows he’s safe here; like he’d be satisfied to curl up at the gates where Ed sets the boundaries and stay there all night—is pretty much the hottest Roy has ever been.  The willingness to be vulnerable, coupled with the respect for Ed’s agency over everything else—

Jesus.

It doesn’t hurt that the heat of Roy's body coiled around Ed’s keeps seeping in and making Ed’s heart beat harder and faster by the second.  It doesn’t hurt that his slow, deep, even breathing against Ed’s neck leaves Ed’s endlessly curious brain wondering what he’d sound like panting, and moaning, and gasping for air—

Ed has acted reckless precious few times in his life—and done it deliberately, of his own volition, far fewer still.  He’s always had too much to lose, too little time, too many reservations and too many promises to keep.  He’s always had good reasons to turn down every risk and sit out every possible adventure.  Being the one solid rock in his and Al’s tumultuous lives has always taken precedence.  He’s always chosen reliability over… fun.  He’s always picked what he knew was needed over what he wanted, no matter how it burned.

And that’s fine.  That’s who he is.  He knows he never really had any alternative: he did what his heart and his head both drove him to.  He did what felt _right_ , not what felt good.

Regrets, though?

Yeah.  He’s got those.  He’s got so many that he color-codes the categories in his head.

But he doesn’t want this to be one of them.

Maybe Roy does mean it.  Maybe that’s enough.  Maybe just this once, taking what he wants and turning up his nose at his own reservations is the better choice.

Maybe just this once, he can have a good thing without the guilty aftertaste.

It’s what Al would want, isn’t it?  Not specifically for Ed to hook up with a French guy he’s known for two days, obviously, but—Al would want him to do something fun and exciting.  Al would want him to do the thing he _wants_ ; Al would want him to throw caution to the winds.  He’s on fucking vacation.  He’s been living with all of the verve and impetuousness of a crotchety eighty-year-old sitting in a rocking chair on the porch and yelling at the kids on the sidewalk to watch their step before they trample his geraniums.

Maybe just this _once_ —

“Hey,” he says.  “Um—is it okay if I… change my mind?”

Roy makes a soft, slightly rumbly sound of acknowledgment that ripples through Ed all the way down to the tips of his toes.  “Mm…” He sits up enough to meet Ed’s eyes, although he hasn’t relinquished the arm around Ed’s shoulders, and his almost-sleepy little smile is fucking _devastating_.  “How do you mean?”

Ed really hasn’t been having too much luck with language, today or any other day, so he swallows the first stammering foray into another sentence and selects another mode of communication.

Having his arm still slung around Roy’s neck makes it all too easy to lean in and kiss him—hard.  Meaningfully.  He doesn’t want to leave the slightest trace of doubt about his intentions; he checks for the lingering bitter velvet taste of the wine as far back in Roy’s mouth as he can reach with his tongue and then nips Roy’s bottom lip for good measure before he draws away.

Roy, breathing lightly, mouth open, eyes wide, blinks at him.

Then Roy _smirks_.

Fucker makes it look so good that Ed’s whole body heats up, not just the _Pretentious Asshole_ alarm that usually goes off at the first sight of an expression like that.

“Yes,” Roy says.  “It is okay.  It is very much more than okay.  In fact—”

His arms untangle from around Ed for the first time in many minutes.  Despite the fact that Ed’s shirt stuck to his skin in a couple places, he doesn’t get time to reflect on the sheer grossness of that, because Roy took both of his hands and pulled to get them both standing upright, and now Roy is kissing him again, which involves no grossness whatsoever.

Roy’s mouth on his obliterates every other possible sensation for a long couple of seconds—or minutes, or hours; time moves differently with his head spinning and his pulse pounding and his whole being straining up and forward for more contact, more heat—

He wakes enough to notice Roy’s hands dragging down his sides, palms open, fingers spread, like Roy wants to map every last square centimeter of him.  He can’t help that he shivers a little when Roy’s fingers curl around his hips—fixing there, but not quite gripping, with an intensity that falls just this side of possessiveness—

They continue to make out—gloriously, _magnificently_ —for a while longer, but they don’t reach an equilibrium: it just keeps ramping up.  Roy’s grasp on his hips tightens, and he pushes deeper into Roy’s mouth with his tongue and clenches a hand in Roy’s hair, and Roy makes a soft sound in the back of his throat, and Ed’s guts throb hard and fast and _hot_ until he just can’t suppress the impulse to hitch his hips in against Roy’s.

As far as gestures go, it’s definitely not on the list of the most ambiguous ones he’s ever made.  To say that Roy gets the memo, though, would be understating matters pretty significantly: he tilts his head at such a gorgeous angle that Ed’s breath stops despite him, and then his fingers catch in the bottom of Ed’s shirt and start tugging it upward.

Ed manages to reel himself in enough to summon a morsel of presence of mind.  It’s just enough to let him draw back, drag in a breath, and choke out, “Wait.”

Roy goes completely still, and his eyes meet Ed’s—but… curiously.  No judgment.  At least not yet.

Ed swallows, steels himself, and makes himself say it: “You might—wanna do this with the lights off.”

Roy’s face doesn’t change for an excruciatingly long second or two, and then it shifts just slightly—something like computation, followed by something like comprehension.

“If it would make you more comfortable,” he says, “then… yes.  Certainly.  By all the means.  But if it is… if you are worried that…” He pauses, blinks, and smiles wanly.  “Ah.  Forgive me.  It is… so difficult to remember the English when I am… thinking of things that do not use so many words.  Perhaps that is easier for this, too.”

Ed followed about forty percent of that, but he _really_ fucking wants to get fucked one way or another at this point, so he just sort of nods in a way that he hopes is the right combination of encouraging and noncommittal.

Roy steps back—which is bad.

Then he starts unbuttoning his shirt—which is definitely, definitely not.

He’s taking his sweet-ass time about it, though, which reads one part sensual and two parts _excruciating_.

“It seems strange to me,” he says, very softly, before Ed can muster the wit or the saliva to complain; “that scars are treated as though they are… shameful.  As though they are to be found ugly because they are evidence that one was wounded.  As though the… what do you say—the damage, and the suffering, are somehow… contagious.  As though they are not, instead, evidence that one was wounded, and one has _healed_.”

The widening gap between the two halves of his shirt splits broader still as his fingertips reach the lowest button.  The sliver of skin beneath expands into a wealth that Ed can barely quantify as Roy rolls his shoulders and peels the shirt away, and God—

He’s just so fucking _hot_.  He’s not, like, super cut or totally jacked like some bodybuilder or a soldier on TV, but he is goddamn _gorgeous_ , and Ed just wants to lick him pretty much all over.

He’s also displaying a fairly impressive quantity of pearled-over lines and divots and starbursts and assorted other marks.  He’s not quite on Ed’s level, or anything, but there’s a big, gnarly mass of scar tissue just above his left hipbone, and there’s a peppered spot opposite that looks like it might’ve been shrapnel or some shit.

Ed would catalogue the rest—he _wants_ to, with his eyes first and then his fingertips and then very possibly his mouth—but a few swirls of blank ink on Roy’s ribcage, just slightly off-center to the left, distract his attention to them for now.  It looks like a day, a month, and a year—three years and two weeks ago, if Ed’s reading right.

“It seems to me,” Roy is saying, calmly folding up his shirt like he hasn’t just offered the equivalent of a bloody steak to Ed’s wild dog, “that a scar is not a… flaw.  It is not an imperfection.  It is the opposite, because every scar is a story.  Every scar is a tale of a hard fight and a hard victory.  A scar is the way the universe signs a truce.”  He sets his shirt down on the arm of the couch, straightens again, and smiles.  “I have liked all of your other stories very much so far.”

He takes a deep breath—beautiful, beautiful, _beautiful_ movement.  Did the human body evolve specifically to make the shift of this man’s muscles choke every last word out of Ed’s throat right now, or is Roy just the luckiest bastard ever born?

Well.  The second-luckiest, maybe, since Ed’s the one standing here staring at him.

“Of course,” Roy says, “if it is… I want most for you to feel safe.  You do not owe me any of your stories.  They are yours, and if you do not wish for me to hear them, then…” He smiles again, and spreads his hands, which is also gorgeous.  “That is your right.  I will be happy all the same.  What do you think?”

“I think you don’t play fucking fair,” Ed forces out.  “I think you might be a hallucination, actually.  Like—can you prove you’re actually real?  I don’t know if I believe it.”  He holds his arm out.  His hand is clearly not shaking a little bit, because that would be stupid, and Ed has never once been stupid in his entire life.  “Pinch me.”

Roy starts to reach out and then pauses.  A trace of bewilderment battles it out with more than a trace of amusement.  “There are… much more nice places where I could do it, if it is something that you like.”

“Not on the first date,” Ed says.  His brain catches up, and his face ignites.  “I—oh, my God.  Fuck it.  You know what—”

Barreling through obstacles half-blindly at high speed never hurt anyone, right?

He peels his shirt off before he can second-guess himself and tosses it towards the back of the couch.

That idea, like many ideas, sounded better in his head than it feels now that he’s executed it.  In concept, it was sort of dashing and devil-may-care in precisely the way that ought to tickle Roy’s overdeveloped sense of melodrama, but in practice—

In practice, he’s just standing in the middle of a really hot guy’s studio apartment, half-naked and red-faced and slightly sticky with accumulated sweat, trying to figure out what to do with his hands.  And his arms.  His feet are easy, at least; he supposes he should count his blessings there.

“All right,” he manages.  “This is what you get.  I hope you meant what you said, ’cause this shit’s, like, a twelve-volume collection with appendices, but—”

Roy steps towards him, raises both hands, and pauses.  “I would read a—what is it?”

Ed tries to swallow, but his throat feels sandy.  Words are right out.

“Encyclopedia,” Roy says, looking very pleased with himself.  The awful thing is that Ed’s pleased, too, and expects that he’ll be more pleased still if Roy will ever finish moving forward and putting those glorious hands on him, for the love of _God_ —

Or—whoever, really.  Ed’s not picky.

Roy shifts, curls his fingers, extends them—

And pauses again.  “I had thought… the appendice was…” He points at his lower right abdomen—which is, Ed will be the first to admit, a great place to fix one’s attention regardless of the inexplicability of the whole situation—and then prods at the skin in an indicative sort of way.  “…the… little organ, and sometimes it is inflamed?”

“Oh,” Ed says.  “I mean, yeah, but it’s one of those horrible English words that means a couple different things.”

He tenses hard enough to make his back ache as Roy’s eyes rake up and down his torso once.  There’s no highly-evident disappointment, or anything; and Roy wasn’t bullshitting about the fact that some of his own scarring is respectably intense, but it’s still—

He has to steel himself not to shy away as Roy extends a hand again.  The pad of his thumb grazes very lightly over one of the intertwining marks from the surgery on Ed’s right shoulder.

“I like long books,” Roy says.

“That sounds like a euphemism,” Ed says.

Roy arches an eyebrow, smiling slightly.  “Can it not be both a euphemism and the truth?”

“You’re getting too philosophical for me right now,” Ed says.  “Aren’t we supposed to be—” The tip of Roy’s first finger drags slowly down his sternum, and he shivers in spite of himself, and then the rest of that train of thought goes up in a puff of brain-melty smoke.  “…yeah.  That.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, I'm alive! It was [a close thing](https://www.instagram.com/p/B12l_A9nv_b/).
> 
> This is the chapter with the porn, so skip to the end for schmoop if you're not into that! There's a fair bit of Emotional Stuff mixed in because that's how I roll, but you won't miss anything too important. C:
> 
> I have discovered that this is the second-to-last chapter! Thank you so much to everyone who has said such extraordinarily kind things so far! I hope you all enjoy the rest, too! ;___; ♥

Roy moves closer—and then closer, and then closer _still_ , until their bodies align, and their chests make contact, and the heat of Roy’s skin against his makes his head whirl, and Roy has to angle his elbow outward in order to run his palm up over Ed’s collarbone, along his neck, to cup it underneath his jaw—

“May I ask of you a very personal question?” Roy says.

“You can ask,” Ed says.  The hammering of his pulse in his throat is distracting as hell; Roy _must_ be able to feel it.  “I can’t promise I’m gonna answer.”

“Mmm,” Roy says, and it rumbles right through both of them, and Ed’s guts roil.  “That is… fair.”

“I try,” Ed says, barely managing to bite back _Even when I’m being fucking seduced and am no longer sure this is my life, because this kind of shit just doesn’t happen to me._   “So what’s the question?”

After all that fucking talk of fairness, Roy ducks down, leans in, and breathes into his ear.

“How long has it been,” Roy murmurs, “since you have had really good sex?”

Ed does his very best to continue respirating, since it’s one of those things that’s generally pretty conducive to continuing one’s existence even when one has to cope with distractions like the overwhelming heat of a gorgeous Frenchman pressed up against one’s body, radiating pure and unadulterated sin.

“Um,” Ed says.  “I—I mean—lots of it—has been—good—” Roy’s hip shifts against his, grazing over the ever-intensifying throb of his dick in his increasingly tight jeans, which almost makes him see stars.  Little snatches of memory flood back through him, twisted by today—flashes snapping through his mind’s eye one after the other, like a slideshow in fast motion.  Fractions of feelings; fingertips on his mouth, on his throat, on his thighs; arms around him, behind him, beneath him; the singular delicious purgatory of a warm, wet tongue exploring nerve endings he didn’t know he _had_ — “But… I mean… what’s—how good is ‘really good’?  How… You know my brother’s showing up tomorrow, right?  I need to be able to _walk_.”

“He arrives in the afternoon, no?” Roy murmurs, teeth touching the side of Ed’s neck for a split-second, so briefly that only the shudder that rattles through Ed’s body stands as evidence that it happened at all.  “At… three?  It seems to me that you would not need to be able to walk until then.”

“Fuck,” Ed says.

“Yes,” Roy says.  “Very soon, I hope.  But I am also hoping that we will learn very many…” His mouth glides down the side of Ed’s neck again, and over his shoulder, and then around the angle of his collarbone to ghost back towards the center of his chest— “…fascinating… things… about each other first.”

“Oh,” Ed says.  “I—” Roy’s mouth moves over his ribs, lingering on the comparatively boring—but still pretty unsightly—faded roundish dark spot from where he splashed the boiling water all over himself that one time he tried to make soup for Al.  “… _oh_.”

“Mmm,” Roy says yet again, but this time is worse than any of the others, because this time is wet and hot and right against Ed’s chest, and he can’t remember a universe where there isn’t a forest fire underneath his skin.  His head spins, and his dick aches, and his fingertips tremble.  “I am…” Roy is kneeling.  Fucking Roy fucking Mustang is getting down on his knees, and Ed can’t wrangle in enough breath to speak with, because Roy is _also_ sliding both hands down Ed’s sides and running his thumbs over every single dip and divot and curve and line.  “…very much in anticipation of what we may discover.”

“I’m not a fucking archaeological dig,” Ed chokes out—because he is, inevitably, himself.  On the cusp of mind-blowing sex or otherwise.  Always.  All the time.  He has to live with that.

On the upside, Roy’s soft laugh against his lower stomach feels terribly, tantalizingly fucking fantastic.  It makes his blood feel fizzy; makes it sing through his veins, and little silver bubbles pop in his brain—

“You know that if you talked less,” Ed says, largely just to distract himself from the simmering proximity of Roy and Roy’s hands and Roy’s mouth and Roy’s breath and Roy’s tongue to his tragically neglected dick, “we could be done with this by now.”

“I do not want to be done,” Roy murmurs, and he looks up through his eyelashes with a smirk like a _scythe_ — “I want this to last for as long as you can bear the pleasure of it.  Not a single moment less.”

Ed’s knees wobble.

Shit.  Did Roy feel that?  One of his eyebrows sort of arcs up higher, but they do that a lot anyway, and…

Apparently it makes no difference either way, because Roy’s hands glide down over Ed’s hips again, slower this time, and then draw around to the front of his jeans and undo the button.

Ed isn’t sure he’s breathing.  Logically, it’s fairly likely, given that he hasn’t gotten noticeably more lightheaded, and after a while his body would realize that he was intent on doing some damage to his other systems and kick the respiration in on automatic, but it sure fucking feels like he just died and possibly ascended to some heaven-like alternate universe where people like _Roy_ might be thinking about blowing him in the imminent future.

Which just—that can’t be right.

And yet—somehow, _somehow_ —Roy has moved on to unzipping his fly, and casting another sultry look up at him before hooking a finger in each of the two nearest belt loops and using the leverage to drag Ed’s jeans partway down his thighs.

Ed says, “Oh.”

Then he says, “Oh, _God_.”

And then, despite the fact that Ed’s dick is _right there_ , and extremely obviously extremely neglected, Roy takes his sweet-ass fucking time mouthing along the elastic at the top of Ed’s boxers, and then kissing his way down the length of a gnarly crimp-edged white scar tissue number from a run-in with a bike and a puddle one time when Ed was late for middle school after dropping Al off at the elementary.  Roy’s hair keeps brushing against Ed’s skin, and Ed’s heartbeat feels like a whole-body hum; periodically a tempo surfaces urgently and starts banging in his ears and his groin and his inner thighs, and Roy must practically _taste_ it—

Roy’s fingers curl around his thighs, thumbs digging in just enough for a pleasant tingle, and Roy looks up at him again.  Roy slides the tip of his tongue over his upper lip, quirks an eyebrow, and smiles.

“May I?” he asks.  “ _S’il te plaît_?”

“The fuck?” Ed manages.  Arranging words in what seems like a comprehensible order gets impossible when your skin is conducting the electric current emanating from someone else’s fingertips.  “Doesn’t that mean ‘if’?  There’s no fucking _if_ , Roy; just—you— _please_ —”

“Anything you wish,” Roy says.

Ed doesn’t have a chance to question that and/or test its logical limits in any of the ways that the School of Sardonic Asshattery requires, because Roy chooses that moment to pull his boxers down far enough to get a mouthful of his dick.

The likelihood that this is actually happening seems infinitesimal, which at least is good on the old nerves—Ed doesn’t have to feel embarrassed if he does something stupid, like tilting his head back and moaning loud enough that Roy’s neighbors are probably scrambling to file a complaint.

You know.  Just hypothetically.

Even if it wasn’t entirely a theoretical situation, it’s not like it’s his damn fault—unsurprisingly, Roy’s every bit as wickedly talented with his mouth in this regard as he was with it in all the others; as he was with his hands and his voice and his choice of words.

Was Roy even telling the truth about the army and the chemistry and the rest of it?  Based on this particular data point, there is substantial evidence that he is, in fact, a professional practitioner of oral sex.  He knows exactly what he’s doing; knows exactly how to rile Ed up to panting open-mouthed with his head thrown back within a matter of _seconds_ —

He uses his mouth and his hands in perfect complement, and his tongue against the underside of Ed’s dick—and then along the side, as he twists it and angles his head and draws back and pushes forward; as his cheeks hollow out—

Obviously the worst part is his sheer fucking affinity for fellatio, which is at such a caliber that it should be listed under the ‘Special Skills’ section of his résumé in any civilized country in the world; but the second-worst part is that Ed can’t gasp at the ceiling and watch him work at the same time.  Ed really, really wants to be able to do both.

What he _doesn’t_ want to do is come in Roy’s mouth thirty seconds after discovering in new depth just how amazing it is, like a horny fucking teenager.  He curls his fingers into fists and tries to breathe as slow as he can despite the way his mind keeps whiting out.

Every single sensation just— _radiates_.  Every time Roy swallows; every time he bobs his head forward or twists his tongue around or makes that incredibly, _unreasonably_ sexy little contented noise in the back of his throat that shimmies up Ed’s nerve endings and lights his skin on fire—

All of Ed’s attempts to ration out his own heartbeats and deliver them in carefully measured time fail spectacularly, but the concentrated effort keeps his mind spiraling somewhere just above oblivion.  He knows he can’t hover here for long, though—knows he can’t hold out much more; knows the opal flood of perfect satisfaction will drown him soon whether he fights it or not.

Roy has demonstrated a gift for delivering an exquisite balance of speed and suction.  Has he actually done math for this?  Ed wouldn’t put it past him.  Maybe there’s an equation.  Maybe—

The best and worst of it is that he’s a fucking _tease_ , too; not that Ed’s surprised.  Over and over, he gradually ramps up the pressure and the pace until Ed teeters on the _edge_ of transcendence, back arched and breathing ragged—and then eases up and slows down and meets Ed’s sputtering disbelief with a raised eyebrow and a wicked, wicked grin.

Bastard.

“Fuck’s sake,” Ed chokes out on the third such occasion.  “You—trying to kill me, or—?”

Utterly, utterly predictably, Roy draws back with about as much lasciviousness as Ed has ever seen manifested in the expression of another human being, licks his lips, and says, “Only a little death.”

“Get fucked,” Ed manages.

“That is my intention,” Roy says, eyelashes dipping dangerously low, and then he leans in and drags his tongue along the underside of Ed’s dick again, and _fuck_ — “But I am enjoying this part so very much.”

“You’re not for real,” Ed says, helplessly, and so faintly that there’s a chance Roy won’t even hear it.  “You can’t possibly be real.”

“No?” Roy says, and then he’s up from his knees again, hands moving up Ed’s sides, mouth moving up the center of Ed’s chest, bearing more searing little softly-accented words that skate over his skin— “I do wonder if perhaps I am having now a rather naughty dream.”

“What the hell do you mean, _you_ are?” Ed asks.  “I’m the one—”

Roy kisses the join of his collarbones before straightening up to look him in the eyes.

His eyes say things that words can’t—not even in a first language.  His eyes say things Ed wouldn’t have dared to believe if they’d been spoken.

Roy is reveling in this even more than he claims.  Ed can’t fathom why, or what it is that he’s doing so damn right—maybe it’s just a perfect coincidence; maybe, just this once, the odds are on his side.  Maybe he’s in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, and Roy needs this—the sweat, the skin, the mouths, the heat—enough to make up for the rest of it.  Maybe Roy’s one of those people for whom the personal connection matters more than appearance or experience or ability, and he’s in the throes of some sort of delusion that Ed’s the ticket right now.  Maybe, somehow, Ed has lucked the fuck out like the world has never seen.

Roy wants this.  Ed has never seen dark eyes lit from within like this; never seen so much naked _desire_ when it’s at home.  Roy wants this a whole hell of a lot.  Roy’s hungry for it, and hungry for more.

“Jesus,” Ed says.  There is not enough blood circulating to his brain.  The part of him that wants to search for second guesses, for other explanations, for self-deprecation and denial and all that downer bullshit—

It’s starving without oxygen.

Which might just be a good thing.

“How come you’re still wearing pants?” Ed asks.  Tact is also one of the first things to go when his brain starts prioritizing the critical centers, and he doesn’t much miss that one either.

Roy glances down at himself, which would be slapsticky in the extreme if it wasn’t so adorable, and then favors Ed with another one of those unconscionable smirks.

“I was… preoccupied,” he says.  “And I would very much like to become preoccupied again.”  He rolls his hips against Ed’s, which presses denim against Ed’s hypersensitive erection, which—hurts, sort of, but in such a nerve-sparking way that it doesn’t register like pain.  “What do you think?”

“I think you misunderstood me,” Ed gets out.  “When I said ‘How come you’re wearing pants’, what I meant was ‘Take your fucking pants off before I rip them to pieces’.”

“Ah,” Roy says.  “I see.  The nuances of your English—”

“That was your last chance,” Ed says.  His hands feel rather like they belong to someone else—distant, tingly, slightly unsteady—but he forces them to grab onto the front of Roy’s jeans.  Trying to find the button while simultaneously giving him a baleful look proves challenging, so in the end he has to glance down to figure it out.  “You’re making this _real_ hard, you know.”

“That seems fair,” Roy says.  “As you are…” He jerks his hips forward against Ed’s, pushing his dick against Ed’s for a long second, which makes Ed’s heart-rate skyrocket all over again and just about explodes his brain.  “…making _this_ very hard.”

“Holy shit,” Ed manages with the feeble remains of his constitution.  “You—really?  Making dirty puns in your second language?  How the fuck does anybody _survive_ you when you’ve got a full vocabulary at your disposal?”

Roy has not moved back a centimeter, and Ed… doesn’t want him to.  Two fistfuls of his jeans to hold him there where they can grind against each other for a little longer should solve that.

“Mm,” Roy says, fingertips dancing up Ed’s spine to tangle themselves into his hair again.  “What has made you so sure that they do?”

“Christ,” Ed says.  “Some of those skeletons down in the Catacombs are people who showed up here unprepared to handle you, aren’t they?”

“I have received advice,” Roy says, straight-faced but with those damn eyes gleaming, “not to answer questions such as this unless I have spoken first with my lawyer.”

“I _knew_ it," Ed says.

They stare at each other for a few seconds.

Then Roy’s eyes crinkle at the corners, and then he laughs.  He leans his forehead against Ed’s and shifts his hips slowly this time—just sort of… rubbing, almost-gently, in a way that makes Ed’s breath catch and his knees quaver but doesn’t shove him right up to the edge.

“I had forgotten,” Roy says, eyes sliding shut, “how much fun this can be with the… what do you say?  The right person.”

Ed has been the only person a lot of times.  He’s been the best—or perhaps the least-worst—available person.  He’s been the convenient person.  He’s been the comfortable person.  He’s been the person of habit, and the person nearby.

He’s not sure he’s ever been the _right_ one before.

He swallows, breathes, and tells the truth:

“You’re going to get us both into a lot of trouble, talking like that.”

“It is the only way I know of talking,” Roy says.  His eyes open just a sliver, and then he tilts his head and kisses the bridge of Ed’s nose, the absolute asshole—like he doesn’t know— “Perhaps—”

“Hold the fuck up,” Ed says, tightening his grip on Roy’s jeans and just sort of starting to tug downward uselessly.  “How many times do I have to—?”

“Just one more,” Roy says, and then kisses his mouth this time—deeply, thoroughly, so that Ed’s eyes fall shut, and his body starts to relax; but then Roy’s tongue toys with his so damn mischievously that he remembers all at once how fucking hard he is, and how that needs to get taken care of _now_.

Somehow, that kiss concludes with both of them fumbling at the fly of Roy’s jeans, which makes both of them laugh again—albeit fairly breathlessly this time, and then Roy bites his lip and tilts his head back and _groans_ the next time Ed’s fingers brush against his dick, and…

And this is really…

Real.  Happening.  _Good_.

Ed lets Roy handle the fucking jeans, since the whole process will be much less efficient if Roy keeps pausing to react to Ed touching him.  Besides, grabbing onto the belt loops and just hauling him towards the bed gets the point across, and it’s extremely fucking enjoyable for its own sake, too.

Walking backwards in a still relatively unfamiliar apartment, buck naked except for his _socks_ , unsurprisingly makes him stumble a little, but Roy just calmly keeps pace with him while managing to lower a zipper so excruciatingly slowly that Ed is positive they’re going to have to call up the Guinness Records people in a second.

He forgets to mention that, though, because Roy makes short fucking work of some underwear Ed doesn’t even see past _black_ , and then he’s naked-except-socks, too, and this is the best fucking vacation of Ed’s life.  He could take a hundred-thousand follow-up vacations, and he’s positive this one would still be the highlight.  Holy shit.

“Well,” Roy says, and he steps in close again, lining their bodies up—chests first, and then he hitches his hips in, and not passing out on the spot requires a significant amount of willpower.  “Where would you like to begin?”

“I thought we were gonna stop talking,” Ed croaks out.

“Altogether?” Roy says, but the curl of the smirk betrays the amusement.  “That was not part of the deal.”  He leans in, down, mouth brushing Ed’s ear— “And I would not wish for you to be quiet.  I want to _hear_ you.”

Ed’s breath sticks in his throat.  His throat, like the rest of him, is extremely hot right now.  Thermodynamically speaking, it’s no great mystery why his next shaking exhalation comes up as steam.

“Oh,” he says.  “I—oh.  Well—I—”

Roy’s hands settle on his waist, and Roy makes one backwards, swiveling half-step to turn them both around—so that the bed’s at Roy’s back, now, and Ed’s in front of him.  Roy sits down on the edge of the mattress and draws Ed towards him, fingertips ghosting up his body again, caressing the scars, mapping out his ribs—

Ed climbs up and straddles him, because fuck it, and _holy fuck_ , and also because his knees were about to give out.  French healthcare probably beats the everloving hell out of the American excuse for it, but he’d greatly, _greatly_ prefer to conclude this evening in this bed rather than in a Parisian E.R.

Despite the fact that it’s more of a desperate maneuver than anything else, by some miracle he manages to angle it exactly right—he settles on Roy’s lap with one knee on either side of Roy’s thighs, and their hips slot together, and the friction _sings_.

Roy’s eyelids actually flutter for a second, which makes Ed’s heart skip, which leaves both of them gasping for breath a bit again.

Then, though—of course; as always; as usual—Ed has to gather his guts and spill the beans.

“I didn’t—figure this was gonna happen,” he says.  “Didn’t even think about it.  Well.  I mean.  Shit, I _thought_ about it, but I didn’t think it’d—”

Roy arches his back so that their torsos press together tighter, and his shiver runs through both of them.

“Nor did I,” he says.

That doesn’t really add up, given that if at any point in their various and sundry touristy adventures, Roy had said _Drop your pants_ to Ed, the occasion would have ended in public indecency charges, but there is not enough blood left for Ed’s brain to allow him to argue.

“What I mean is,” he says, “I didn’t… y’know, like—prepare.  Or anything.”

“I had not assumed,” Roy says, one hand walking up Ed’s chest—which is something of a feat of dexterity, given how narrow the space between them is—to settle against his jaw, thumb grazing over his cheek.  “And I had not… what would you say.  I do not rely upon it.”  The softness of his sincerity gives way to a familiar and obnoxiously appealing arced eyebrow and coordinating smirk.  “There are so many other ways to enjoy ourselves, if we are creative.”

Ed swallows, swallows again— “I’ve been… accused of creativity once or twice in my life.  Usually in the context of chemicals you really shouldn’t ever mix or experiments that nobody thought would work, but—still counts.  Right?”

Roy goes back to grinning, damn him; and then goes back to dragging his mouth up Ed’s throat, which is even worse.  “I most definitely think it counts.”

“Good,” Ed says.  “’Cause right about now, your opinion’s the only fucking one I care about.”

“You are,” Roy murmurs, kissing the underside of his chin, which makes him arch his back, which pushes their bodies closer, “so very kind.”

“Not really,” Ed chokes out.  “Definitely not now.”  He swallows, and Roy’s breath chases the movement of it in his throat— “I don’t want you to be nice either.”

“No?”  Roy’s soft laugh sends a brand-new prickle of anticipation down to the tips of his fingers and the soles of his feet.  “I am at your service, of course.”

“Then quit talking,” Ed says, “and show me what you’ve got.”

“Mmm,” Roy says.

And then he has both arms around Ed’s waist, and he’s hiked Ed’s weight up enough to disentangle one of Ed’s legs from around him, which—

Frees up the physics, which—

Is Ed’s only warning before the rush of air and the sensation of falling and the inevitable pillowy impact on the bed.

“You _fucker_ ,” he gasps out, trying to get his elbows underneath him.

Roy’s over him before he can find any leverage on the wonderful cushy mattress—hand in his hair, teeth grazing his collarbones, knee settled between his thighs and pressing in— “Do not pout, my darling; you said—”

“I don’t _pout_ ,” Ed says.  “I fucking _scowl_ , if it’s anything, and I’m not even doing that, but you—”

“Forgive me,” Roy says, nuzzling under his jaw and then breathing into his ear again.  “My English, you know.”

“I’m starting to know your English way too fucking well,” Ed says.

“Ah,” Roy says.  “Perhaps you may prefer another language instead.”

Ed knows exactly what that innuendo means.

He knows exactly how hard this is going to bowl him over and ruin him for everything and everybody else for a long, long time.

He knows that he’s in _deep_ , and his feet don’t even brush the bottom.

And he says “Hit me with it” anyway.

Roy’s fingertips drag down his sides and then dig into the meat of his ass, and he squirms, and Roy laughs softly—right against his throat.  It’s almost predatory for a single second, but then Roy’s eyelashes brush against his jaw, and Roy’s kissing down the ridges of his esophagus one by one.

A tiny part of Ed still wants to bite back—writhe and argue and spit venom and make Roy _work_ for it.

But the rest of him—

Just wants to melt right into this and let Roy know all too loudly how much he fucking needs it.

It’s probably a good thing that Al has never quite managed to wrangle him in to see a psych, because he’s pretty sure the concept of casual sex as a signifier of emotional acceptance would be a topic for several very awkward sessions.

For once, though, he thinks he can worry about that _after_ he’s done living it.

Roy doesn’t give him long to vacillate anyway—Roy seems more interested in working the knee he interposed between Ed’s thighs up against him, like Ed’s raging hard-on needs the fucking reminder that they were talking about getting somewhere.

Roy’s hands settle on Ed’s hips, and he makes a scenic journey down Ed’s chest again—licking and nipping and breathing hotly over every scar this time, slowing down to savor the huge, hideous train-track arcs of the ones on Ed’s abdomen from the donation surgeries.  Ed still can’t understand why the fuck anybody would want to linger there.  He’s not ashamed of them—given a second chance and a second life, he’d do it again in a heartbeat.  He’d give twice as much.  Al is worth a hundred-billion times more than every single weird ache and everything Ed’s had to cross off of his safe-to-eat list; Al is worth every single miserable dose of medication and every lousy doctor’s appointment.  Al is worth the hospitals and the needles and the nausea and the pain.  Those two scars are proof that sometimes, if you give enough, you really can get something back.

The bottom line is that he wouldn’t trade a single hair on Al’s head for nicer-looking skin, but he can’t process a universe where somebody who looks like Roy would… _appreciate_ it, in one sense of that word or another.  The best he can usually hope for is toleration or disinterest, both of which have their advantages.

This is—

Different.  Everything about Roy is different.  And it’s just not _fair_ to think that in a few spare hours—

Well, that settles it, he supposes—he can’t think about it.  The hour he has is this one, and the moment that matters is now.

Like _hell_ is he going to fuck this up.

He grinds down against Roy’s thigh to make his intentions absolutely unmistakable, and then he hooks one arm around the back of Roy’s neck and slides one fingertip of the other hand along the length of Roy’s dick.

“I shouldn’t get to have all the fucking fun,” he says.

“Believe me,” Roy says, breath quickening against his chest, eyes rising to him half-lidded and dark as hell, “you are not.”

“Good,” Ed says.  He feels like someone told him once that coy understatement is half of flirting, which probably means it’s at least a quarter of foreplay, but it’s very possible that that information came from the kind of person who thinks that you can’t compliment somebody you’re interested in because they should have to try to win you over.  He knows a frightening number of people who have said things like that.

Roy’s not one of them.

Roy’s so far at the opposite end of the spectrum that he’s launched himself off of the marked measurement line and into the stratosphere.

And Ed intends to thank him for it.

Starting with, y’know, a really good handjob, hopefully.  Maybe a letter later on.

Roy appears to be enjoying stage one, if the way he’s leaned his head down against Ed’s collarbone and started breathing raggedly is any indication.  The breathy little noises of approbation are also a good sign.  One of them deepens into a throaty moan, which makes Ed shiver, which makes his hips hitch up and collide with Roy’s again.  That’s uncomfortable on his hand, but it makes Roy groan louder, and the wet heat of the narrowing space between them just—

That’s what he wants.  The whine on the edge of Roy’s every breath; the searingly warm connection; the way his reservations keep dissolving in their mingling sweat and evaporating into nothing, and all that remains is the _joy_ of it.

Well, that and the brain-obliterating endorphin rush that keeps spiking higher than he thought his body could sustain.

Roy pauses in massaging at his ass in an emblematically tremendous-side-of-torment kind of way—which Ed has almost mustered the breath to complain about when Roy’s fingertip settles right at the top of the cleft and then gently strokes a half-inch down.

Roy has somehow kissed his way back up to bring their faces level; has somehow found an all-new depth for when he opens his eyes and fixes Ed’s in their thrall.

“May I?” he asks.

Ed’s guts have coalesced into a thrumming, throbbing, simmering knot; his breath feels like steam, but his heart soars like a hungry kestrel buoyed on the heat.

“Yeah,” he says.  “Yes.  Please.”  Heatwaves shimmer on the surface of his brain— “But—shit.  Like.  Please tell me you have lube that isn’t expired.  _Please_.”

Roy starts to laugh, stops about half a breath in, murmurs something that definitely sounds like a swear word, kisses each of Ed’s collarbones lingeringly in turn, and then shifts back and settles on his knees to go digging through the drawer in the bedside table.  He looks really fucking good there, with his body stretched out and his shoulders angled and his fucking gorgeous back muscles on full display.  And that ass.  And his cock.  Really nice cock, too.  Ed’s dreaming, right?  It would have made so much more sense if something had gone horribly wrong.

Well, maybe all of the lubricants’ best-by dates were set for about midway through Roy’s deployment, and Roy will suggest dishsoap or some shit, and Ed will have to choose between the possibility of weird infections and the certainty of smelling lemon-fresh in places he would _really_ rather not, and hurling himself out the window naked to escape.

That sounds closer to his style.

Roy, despite looking like a raunchy Renaissance painting that Ed would hang on the wall in his bedroom in a fucking heartbeat, is holding a little tube up and reading it intently, forehead furrowed and eyes narrowed and mouth pulled down.  He’s fucking adorable even while he’s mind-bendingly hot.  Ed wants to send a strongly-worded letter to the universe, and he’s not sure whether it would be a scandalized protest of the sheer injustice or a gushing thank-you note.

“You are not… what is—allergy to silicone?” Roy says.

The window would be so much easier.  Ed’s heart is just… mush.  “Nah.  If it’s still good, I’m good.”

“You are—” Roy tosses the lube down onto the sheets, which shouldn’t make Ed’s heart jump like that, and then leans in to catch up one of Ed’s feet.  Before Ed can make the obvious comment about fetishes, though, Roy is cradling it in both hands and kissing his ankle so reverently that he forgets how to generate speech.  “—always good.  So very good.”

“Shut up,” Ed croaks out.

Roy grins at him.  “That is the only of your wishes that I know I will not be able to give to you.”

It isn’t.  But now’s not the time.  “Okay.  How about ‘fuck me’?”

“That,” Roy says, “I will most certainlygive.”

Fucking Roy—this has got to be the real reason people say _Pardon my French_ when they drop an F-bomb; Ed won’t hear any other explanations from linguists from here on out.  Roy Mustang has earned the _fucking_ more than Ed would have ever imagined possible, both in the expletive sense, as an emphasis on his name just in general; and in the gerund form of the verb.  _Fucking Roy_ should be considered a complete sentence, because it is absolutely a complete experience.

Roy works him open so fucking slow that respiration goes out the window several times during the process, and Ed hardly notices until his lungs ungently remind him that people have to breathe for a reason.

Roy moves with him, too—pressing against him so close that their bodies undulate as one every time Ed writhes or arches for a better angle; if his breath hitches hard, or he grits his teeth, Roy instantly stops and waits and kisses at the side of his neck and starts to murmur softly until Ed explicitly tells him to keep going.

Which is why, in the end, it takes upwards of half an hour for Roy to get three fingers in and start fucking Ed in earnest.  The sheer amount of time, in combination with the careful attention and the dizzying number of soft kisses on his face and ears and throat, has made it painfully clear that Roy does not consider this business-as-usual.  Roy does not consider this business at all.  Roy takes this extremely seriously, and wants to do it exactly right, and wants to build Ed up to heretofore unseen, unfelt, and unimagined heights of physical sensation, one flaring spike of a nerve ending at a time.

Ed’s breath thins, and his toes curl, and his heart just about squirms right out of his chest—

Roy makes a low, contemplative noise in the back of his throat, face buried in Ed’s neck, and shifts against him.  The change of the angle pushes their dicks together again, and the slide of Roy’s chest ignites a whole new wave of trilling signals underneath his skin.

Then Roy twists his hand just right and presses his fingertips against Ed’s prostate.

And it’s pure fucking lightning.

But no branches; no fizzling tendrils, no fading lines—sheet lightning.  A wall of incandescence—an unsustainable brightness everywhere at once—

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Ed hears his voice choke out.

He hauls himself back from the edge with the combined powers of force of will and an ounce of luck, and the haze in his vision resolves into Roy watching him with such unmitigated delight that his guts drop all over again.

“Hey,” Ed says.  “What’s that look for?”

“I do not know what the look is,” Roy says, but he sure as hell hasn’t stopped doing it.  “I also do not know what is ‘hey’.  This must be another of these American words that means anything you wish it to mean.”

“Whatever,” Ed says.

Roy laughs.

So Ed wraps a hand around his dick, which twists the laugh into a gasp, which tapers into a sigh, and Roy leans his head in against Ed’s neck again, and Ed can feel him smiling.

“You are,” Roy breathes, “teaching me all of the most important words.”

“Oh, yeah?” Ed says.  “I got another one for you.”  He tunnels his hand tighter around Roy’s dick and fists the other hand in Roy’s hair, which makes it easier to draw him in and whisper into his ear.  “ _Harder_.”

“Ah,” Roy says.  His voice sounds slightly strained this time.  “I—yes.  That is a word that I… know.”

“Prove it,” Ed says.

Now he can feel the wolfish grin.  He starts to steel himself against a shiver—and then remembers that he can just… release it.  He can do that tonight.  He’s safe here.  Just this once.

Roy reconfigures their positions again so that he can kiss Ed’s throat as the current of the shiver moves through him, and then seal his mouth over Ed’s right as it ripples out.

He stays there.

And he bites down on Ed’s lip almost enough to make it painful, almost enough to leave an imprint like a mark of ownership, like a claim—

And he puts his fingers back into play, following Ed’s instruction to the fullest.

He moves his hips in time with every thrust of his hand, which rubs their dicks together in a perfectly-matched rhythm that summons new heights of frantic thundering from Ed’s heart and fires still more heat in his throbbing guts, in his seething blood—

Roy has the target now.

What he doesn’t have is any goddamn mercy.

Ed comes fucking _hard—_ with Roy’s tongue in his mouth, with his hand on Roy’s cock, with his heart in his throat and his brain filled with fucking supernovas glimmering bright iridescent white.

He has to gasp at the ceiling for a couple seconds before he even realizes that the hot spill over the knuckles of his hand isn’t his—or isn’t all his, at least, because Roy just nestled in against his neck again and made a faint groaning noise that sounds a _lot_ like a man who just got exactly what he wanted.

Which is funny, sort of, because Ed feels the same damn way.

He still has his clean hand curled in Roy’s hair, but his extremities don’t seem to be operating entirely up to his usual standard for small motor skills, so he carefully tries to disentangle his fingers before he accidentally rips a patch of hair out and reduces Roy to a nine-point-eight out of ten until it grows back.

He realizes—too late, always too late—that that might read like rejection, so he attempts to stroke Roy’s hair back a little instead of just pulling his hand away.  To be fair, the stroking thing is remarkably enjoyable in its own right, and there’s something weirdly satisfying about the way the sweat from Roy’s hairline smears under his fingers.

“I…” Ed says.

He blinks at the ceiling.  The ceiling is sort of cute without even trying, like everything else in this apartment, including and especially Roy.  Unfortunately, it has a grand total of zero suggested sentences inscribed upon it.

“Holy shit,” Ed says instead.

“We have become a mess,” Roy says, although he sounds much more amused than regretful.

“Speak for yourself,” Ed says.  “I was definitely a mess way before we started.”

“Such a beautiful one,” Roy says.  “Do not move.”

A rousing round of the reaching-for-the-Kleenex-box-without-spilling-pooled-fluids-on-the-sheets game ensues.  Ed was never any fucking good at this one, but Roy manages to snag the corner of the box, tip it to the edge of the nightstand, and then hook one finger into the gap in the middle, which gives him the leverage to lift it over to them, and then…

Well, the scrubbing-cum-off-of-people’s-abs game Ed is a little better at.  He usually gets passing marks, at least, and the shower isn’t far off anyway, and as far as the consequences of staggeringly satisfying pastimes go, this one is remarkably low-impact.  He’ll take it.

Plus Roy sort of wriggles and presses his lips together when Ed goes after a wayward smudge near his hip, which means he’s fucking _ticklish_ , and that’s so gobsmackingly adorable that Ed could swear his heart actually stops for a second.

“D’you wanna use the bathroom first?” he asks when he’s mostly sure his cardiovascular system is functioning correctly again.

“Please,” Roy says.  “You are my guest.”

Ed opens his mouth to say _I think it’s more than that now_ , but then he shuts it again.  He makes sure to roll his eyes and hide a grin as he makes his slightly wobbly way over to the edge of the bed and then stands up slowly.

Because Roy’s right.

Isn’t he?

Tomorrow this will be over, and Ed will be gone.  If this mattered even a quarter as much to Roy as it has to Ed, Roy won’t forget it any time soon, but Ed knows better than many that memory doesn’t count for much.

He cleans up and puts his pajamas on—well, a T-shirt and his boxers, since it’s too damn hot to suffer much of anything else—and reemerges.

Unsurprisingly, he finds himself standing next to the bed, looking down at the mattress and desperately attempting to figure out if he should climb right in or offer to sleep on the couch or just go straight for the couch without saying anything.  It’s not like Roy’s ever actually invited him int—

“I promise it is clean,” Roy says, drawing the sheets back and then patting the mattress with one of his winning smiles.  “Or—perhaps not… clean, so much, but… it is not wet.  I promise it is not wet.”

“It’s so damn hot I probably wouldn’t mind,” Ed says, instead of commenting on the fact that Roy just read his mind and then smoothly gave him an easy out of the awkwardness.

What the actual, honest _fuck_?  Where are all the people like this in the rest of Ed’s life?  How the hell is he supposed to go back home and pretend like any of the guys who have ever hit on him in California could hold a dollar-store tea-light candle to this?

Fuck.

He settles down in Roy’s bed, which they just had glorious sex in, and stares at the characteristically-cute ceiling and tries not to pity himself.  Self-pity is pointless and overrated.  It never gets you anywhere you want to go, and it feeds itself the more you indulge it.  Sometimes it feels good for the first couple of minutes, but then it starts to eat at you, and in the end it all hurts more.

The universe doesn’t give a shit.  The planet turns.  The sun rises.  The world goes on.  Ed has never been able to afford to let it go on without him.

Roy kissed his forehead before ghosting off to take a shower.  This was just supposed to be sex.  It was just supposed to be convenient—companionable.  That’s how this started.  That’s all it was.

He shouldn’t have gotten so invested, but it’s not like Roy gave him any damn _choice_.

Speaking of a rendition of the Devil even hotter than any of the ones they’ve recently seen carved out of stone, Roy returns with wet hair, basketball shorts, and a tank top that might not be standard military issue but is definitely a targeted attack on vulnerable gay boys who are extremely susceptible to mouthwateringly well-shaped biceps.

Roy checks the locks on the door, turns out the lights, and crawls in on the other side of the bed.  Ed’s lying on his back with his hands folded on his chest, trying not to take up too much space—Al always slyly reminds him that he probably doesn’t cover as much surface area as he thinks he does, but the math never seems to add up right.  He feels like he’s in the way far more often than should be statistically plausible.

Roy moves a little closer and settles in at the perfect distance—close enough to reach over and touch, but not encroaching into Ed’s personal bubble just yet.  How does he _know_?

“You are thinking,” Roy says.

Staring at the ceiling has grown slightly more difficult now that Ed can’t actually _see_ it, but he’s trying his best anyway.  “Sorry.”

“You should not be sorry,” Roy says.  “I believe very confidently that your thinking will create great advances in medicine very soon.”  A whisper on the sheets; the slightest tug on them—Roy extended his hand halfway into the space between them and then paused.  “But this thinking now seems to me to be… unhappy.  No?”

Everything’s easier and harder in the dark.  Being able to see someone’s face when you say something stupid holds you accountable for it in a different sort of way.

Ed’s tired.  He’s tired of running; tired of hiding; tired of censoring himself.

The worst part is that he knows that Roy won’t mind.

He takes a couple deep breaths, but it’s still a challenge to keep the catch out of his voice.

“I just don’t want to lose you,” he says.

Roy is quiet for so long that Ed thinks—

Obviously he miscalculated.  It wouldn’t be the first time.  People don’t adhere to equations the same way as the other kinds of variables do; sometimes you can analyze for hours and still miss a component that changes the output entirely.  Sometimes people surprise you just for the fuck of it.

He senses Roy’s fingers near his face before he feels the knuckles sweep against his cheek.

“Then don’t,” Roy says.

Ed blinks up at the dark.

He probably didn’t hear that right—or Roy didn’t mean it the way it sounded; he doesn’t use contractions very often, so—

“I will give you my email,” Roy says, “and you can tell me which strange American applications I need to put onto my phone.  And I will buy a new laptop with a camera, or we can just write many letters, and I will make sure to be as French as possible in all of them.”

Ed squints at the dark this time.  That doesn’t help.

Roy just tilted the playing field so far that it turned into a completely different game.

“Long-distance almost never works,” Ed says.  That one sticks, too, but it’s the damn truth, and someone ought to say it before this spins any further out of control.

“Mm,” Roy says.  He shifts closer, lays his arm across Ed’s chest, tucks his head in against Ed’s shoulder— “Children without their parents almost never become successful scientists.  Liver transplants almost never go wrong.  Strangers on the TGV almost never see one another anymore.  You have already done so many ‘almost-never’s.  What is one more?”

Ed says, “I’m really not sure that’s a sound logical extrapolation,” but his hand is an asshole, and it reaches over and threads itself into Roy’s hair.

“Life is rarely logical,” Roy says.  “That is what makes it… what do you say?”

“Horrible,” Ed says.

“Fun,” Roy says.

“Eew,” Ed says.

Roy laughs softly and trails a light fingertip up and down Ed’s sternum before settling his open palm on Ed’s ribs.  Goddamn cheater.  He’ll be able to feel every single alteration in Ed’s heartbeat from there.

“Now you are thinking something else,” Roy says.

“Yeah,” Ed says.  “I’m thinking I really want to lie here like this with you for, like, an hour, but it’s way too fucking hot.”

“Ah,” Roy says, and Ed can hear the grimace.  “It is fascinating—my thoughts were precisely the same.”

“Fuck summer,” Ed says.

Now Ed can hear the smile.  “Yes.  Fuck summer.”

And fuck super hot Frenchmen who somehow become your long-distance boyfriend, apparently.

Sweat prickles at the back of Ed’s neck, and on the insides of his elbows, and pretty much everywhere else.  He leans over and fumbles in the dark to find Roy’s nose with his, which lets him navigate his way to kissing Roy’s mouth instead.

“Okay,” he says.  “G’night.”

“And you,” Roy breathes against his lips.

  


* * *

  


Ed wakes to a grayish-yellowish pre-dawn and an extremely heavy, extremely hot arm across his chest.

“OhmyGod,” he mumbles before his brain shudders awake, trying to squirm out from underneath.  “You’re so _warm_ —”

His brain catches up.

His eyes adjust.

He goes as still as he can, but it’s too late.

Roy is blinking at him drowsily, eyelids heavy, lashes low, cheek smushed against the pillowcase.

Roy fucking smiles—just like that, immediately, like it’s a compulsion.

“ _Bonjour_ ,” Roy says.  At least Ed knows that one.  Roy starts to extract his arm from the tangle of their bodies and the sheets.  There’s a charming damp spot left behind on Ed’s shirt, which is sticking to the identical damp spot on his skin underneath.  He should hate this a lot more than he does.  “I have some… very bad news, I think.”

Ed tries to wake up faster so that he can brace himself, but heat-sleep is like interrupted sleep except even hazier.  “I—oh.  What?”

Roy reaches out with the previously-offending arm and taps a fingertip against the end of Ed’s nose.

“You need to have glasses,” he says.

Ed stares at him.

The corners of Roy’s eyes crinkle up even more.  The bastard is enjoying Ed’s confusion.  It is the _morning_.  Are the French all sadists, or is Ed just lucky like that?

“If you cannot understand how beautiful you are,” Roy says, “I believe your eyesight may not be so very good.”

Ed feels much more awake now that his face is on fire.  “Wh— _stop_.  What the fuck?”

Roy grins at him and then starts stroking his hair back away from Ed’s face—which, for the record, is a _foul_.  “You are my boyfriend, no?  It must be permissible to say these things to my boyfriend.”

“Eew,” Ed says.

“That is a new one of your favorites,” Roy says.  “I do not think we have ‘Eew’ in French.”

“I bet you do,” Ed says.  “It just has, like, five more vowels in it.”

“And perhaps a T which is not spoken,” Roy says.

“At least one,” Ed says.

Roy smiles at him some more.

It is _way_ too fucking early, but now Ed’s definitely awake.

“Hey,” he says.  “Do you want some pancakes?”

Roy’s eyes light up, and Ed’s heart goes down in flames.

“Yes,” Roy says.  “ _Please_.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is it, friends! ;__; I'm sad to see this one go. I enjoyed putting it together, but the comments and excitement from you guys made it a million times more fun. That's where the real joy of this whole gig is. Thank you all so much! ;__; ♥
> 
> Expect a crap-ton more schmoop and assorted nonsense soon as I finish some things up!

“What would you like for us to do this morning?” Roy asks from where he has artfully sprawled all over the couch while Ed was innocently taking a shower.

Ed considers saying _Can we just fuck until, like, two thirty and then go get Al?_ , but there is a zero percent chance that he is going to go pick up his baby brother from the train station, brand-new apparently-boyfriend in tow, smelling of sex.  And his hair would make it worse.  He always ends up with _ridiculous_ sex hair.  Post-coital poof.

“Um,” he says instead.  “I dunno.”  Even after pancakes and the shower, it’s still stupid-early.  “You got anything in mind?”

“We would have time to see Versailles if we did not stay too long,” Roy says, tilting his head back idly.  He knows Ed’s watching his throat and his hips, the _bastard_.  If he didn’t look so damn good there, Ed would call him out on it.  “But it does take some time to travel.  If you are not offended by the Impressionists, the Musée d’Orsay is very famous also.”

“I’m offended by you lying there like that when we can’t just sit around and fuck like rabbits all day,” Ed says.  So much for not calling him out.  Whatever.  He deserves it.  “Well—what do _you_ want to do?”

“Sit around,” Roy says calmly, “and fuck like rabbits all day.”

Ed tries—very hard—not to start laughing, but this asshole just gets him every time.  “I mean—obviously, but that’s not on the table, so—”

“The museum,” Roy says, lolling piteously around on the couch.  “There are so many beds in Versailles.  Very beautiful, very historic beds.  I cannot promise I would be able to resist the urge to try to bring you to one or many of them, and we would be arrested for desecrating antique furniture and scaring children, and your brother would be very discontent.  I do not think there are any beds at the Musée d’Orsay.  It is the only place that is safe.”

“You’re so dramatic,” Ed says.  “You sure there isn’t a theater with a play we could go see instead?  You’d feel right at home.”

“There is the opera house,” Roy says.  “But you would not like to hear me sing.”

Ed crosses over to him and holds out both hands.  “We’d better go do _something_ , or we’re going to end up with the rabbit thing, and we’ll miss Al’s train, and I’ll have to throw myself off a bridge someplace.”

Roy grabs on to both of his hands and lets Ed heave him upright.

“I would catch you,” he says without letting go.

“Careful,” Ed says, “or you’re gonna learn a lot of English words for ‘barf’.”

  


* * *

  


The museum probably would be really nice if Ed could pay a single iota of attention to it—for one thing, he would never even have dreamed of putting an art museum into an old train station, and the result is half-bizarre and half-amazing—but all he can really focus on is… Roy.

Roy looks good in everything he wears (as well as in nothing) and while doing everything he’s done so far.  He has a way of subtly leaning forward when he looks at paintings like he’s trying to commune with them, or seeking some deeper meaning, or working on identifying individual brushstrokes.  It’s cute.  He’s really fucking cute.  And he keeps slipping his hand into Ed’s every time they move to a different part of the museum, and he gets this smug-happy look on his face when he does it, like he can’t believe his luck—

Surely Ed can’t be asleep right now, unconsciously conjuring some particularly detailed fantasies.  Even his sleeping brain wouldn’t come up with the train-station-museum thing, would it?  It’s simultaneously too feasible and too far-fetched.  His brain would go for, like, an underwater museum that you have to scuba dive to get to.  This isn’t really his brand.

Which means it must be real.

When he and Roy have wandered through the who’s-who of Impressionism for several eons, they stagger out into the sunlight and go in search of food again.  Paris yields up another adorable street-side café with wrought-iron chairs and a red awning, and once they’ve cooed over the menu, and Ed’s forced money into Roy’s palm, Roy goes in to order for them, leaving Ed at their table, checking his phone.

He’s been touching base with Al over text here and there through the morning, and it’s looking like the three o’clock arrival still holds.  It occurs to him that he should probably warn Al about… this.

_So uh.  Roy and I kind of decided to make the thing an actual thing.  Like a dating-thing.  I know it sounds like a bad idea for a whole host of reasons BELIEVE ME, I thought about all of them, but it just sort of happened and felt right and now I guess that’s a thing so I wanted to give you a heads up so you’re not like “what the fuck” when you get here.  Although if you’re like “what the fuck” anyway I don’t blame you because I’m kind of like “what the fuck myself” hahaha_

Nothing ties up a good text-message treatise quite like the immortal eloquence of the seminal _hahaha_ , in Ed’s opinion.  Ed’s been told that his opinion is not what the kids call ‘top-notch’, but he’s never had much time for haters.

Al apparently doesn’t have much time for beating around the bush, since the response message that Ed receives momentarily reads only:

_Brother, you slept with him, didn’t you????_

Ed feels that he should get at least one or two composure points for not squawking out loud in the middle of the outdoor seating area of a little French café.

_WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT AND WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY_

Al, in typical Al style, answers almost instantly again:

_I’m not trying to say anything and I don’t even really think it’s a bad thing and I wouldn’t have said what I did to you on the phone if I hadn’t thought it was a pretty real possibility.  And I had thought it was a real possibility because you have sent me photos, and I have seen the way you two keep looking at each other.  I explained that out of order but you know what I mean._

Ed narrows his eyes at that message, but no secret second set of text appears in the blank pixels between the lines, so then he taps over to his photos app and starts thumbing through the images.

They only got one photo in the Musée d’Orsay, which is partly because Ed’s head is somewhere else entirely, and partly because it seemed sort of weird to bring up the staged-selfie game when it’s no longer really… relevant.  The point was to fabricate something for Andy to be jealous of, but now there’s something _real_ that’s so good that Ed doesn’t want to share it with the likes of that asshole in the first place.

Ed didn’t even send Al this one—he doesn’t plan to send it to anyone.  Right before he hit the shutter, Roy shifted from his usual position with his head tilted against Ed’s and his most dazzling grin in place, and he ended up kissing Ed’s cheek right as the photo took.  Ed, naturally, instinctively made a face that combines the worst parts of reluctant delight and scrunch-nosed dismay, and he simultaneously tried to turn away, so there’s a kind of hilarious blurry-cryptid thing there on top of everything else.

It’s… really cute, in spite of Ed’s face, both in general and in terms of that particular expression.  And it’s really… boyfriendy.

But Al hasn’t even _seen_ it, so how—?

Ed moves back to some of the ones from yesterday, paying special attention to the ones he favorited so that he’d be able to find them and text them to Al more easily.  They’re… nice, sure.  He and Roy are pretty close, and they look a lot more comfortable with each other than you’d expect from two people who met on a train what was, realistically, an extremely short time ago.  But the ones from yesterday bear no indication that they made out the night before, and the ones from the first day are sort of silly and giddy-looking, and Ed can see the travel-fatigue on both of their faces when he looks for it.

So… what?  Al’s just psychic?  That wouldn’t really be a surprise.

 _Whatever,_ Ed writes back when he’s racked his brain some more, tabbed back and forth through the photos, and still come up empty-handed.  _The point is I guess I make really good pancakes because he decided he’d be willing to try long distance or something and I have no idea if it’s going to work but I figured it might be relevant because (a) you’re my brother and I tell you everything and (b) he might come with me to the train station to meet you._

Al just sends him back a couple of sparkly hearts.  Ed doesn’t know what that means.  Unfortunately, he feels like saying _Use your words_ to your little brother loses some of the effect once you’re both older than five.

 _Just curious,_ he writes back instead.  _Have you ever been surprised by anything I’ve done in your entire life?_

Al sends back more sparkly hearts, and Ed _almost_ sends him back a middle finger emoji before giving in and grudgingly putting a slightly less-sparkly heart in its place instead.  Flipping the bird has more power in person, anyway, and you can accompany it with facial expressions and gestures and follow it up with apologies to make sure nobody’s feelings accidentally get hurt.

Al then sends him the heart-eyed cat, which means it’s probably time for Ed to put his phone away before he throws it into the river, and whatever fish have survived the water conditions try to beat his Bejeweled score.

Besides, Roy’s probably coming back soon.

And Ed wants every last damn second with Roy that he can get.

  


* * *

  


After they finish eating, and they’re just sort of lazing around trying to determine whether it’s worth scrounging up another tourist trap to fill the dwindling interval before Al arrives, Ed snags a couple of photos of Roy sitting there nursing an espresso.  He gets away with a candid on the first one, before Roy’s noticed that his phone is raised, and then the posing and the smirk and the bedroom eyes are employed with gusto.  The first one is the best, though—Roy, arm bent over the back of the chair, one leg crooked over the other, holding the tiny white porcelain cup just centimeters from his lips and gazing idly into the middle distance.  It looks like an ad—a very, very French ad.  The kind where regardless of what the hell they’re selling, Ed would be possessed by a visceral need to purchase it for a long half-second.

He’d make it his lock-screen right here and now, except that his existing lock-screen is Al near the ice cream shop four blocks from their apartment, with a smudge of mint-chip on the tip of his nose, crouched down and coaxing a stray kitten out of the alley behind the store.  This one is a phone photo that he would _die_ to protect.  He almost got the part immediately after where the cat put a paw on Al’s knee and stretched up to try to lick the ice cream off his nose, but Al immediately burst into tears, which spooked the poor thing and sent it running.

“Do you see anything you like?” Roy asks.

He’s doing the eyebrow thing, which somehow still catches Ed off-guard, which leaves him with nothing to say aloud but the truth:

“Yeah,” he says.  “Like… everything.  But especially how… there’s something about the way you look when you’re thinking—it makes me really want to know what you’re thinking about, and at the same time, I feel like I can’t stand to interrupt.”

“Just now, I have been thinking,” Roy says, with one of the grins that’s ever-so-slightly lopsided because it’s not remotely staged, “that life is very short, and very strange, and sometimes very wonderful.  And I have tried to remember what is the best gelato near to the train station, so that we can bring your brother to there.”  He arches an eyebrow.  “What do you think?”

It takes everything Ed’s got left not to say _I think I fucking love you_ , so there’s that.

But he swallows it and flashes a grin and says, “I think he’s gonna like you if you lead with the gelato thing,” and Roy preens a little bit, so there’s that, too.

  


* * *

  


Ed gets more worried about the Al-liking-Roy aspect of the whole situation as the time creeps closer to three, and they meander closer to the Gare de Lyon.  Sure, Al talked to Roy on the phone for a minute; and sure, he usually makes his primary judgments within the first five seconds of interacting with someone, and only occasionally adjusts when further evidence presents itself; and sure, he wouldn’t likely have written the things he did just now if he wasn’t fairly confident in his original assessment, but—

Still.  What if this is an abnormal encounter, and Al ends up hating Roy, and it turns into a big thing, and—?

Ed knows he needs to chill the fuck out about bridges that haven’t even appeared on the horizon, let alone materialized close enough for crossing, but Al’s opinion is a big deal.  Everything about Al is a big deal.  And _damn_ it, how can Ed have missed him so much when it’s only been two and a half days since they separated, after so long apart that he thought he’d gotten used to it?

He catches Roy smiling at him as they loiter around the platform where Al’s train is due to arrive in T minus a handful of minutes.  The only appropriate response, of course, is “What?  Do I have something on my face?  Al’ll think I can’t take care of myself; where—?”

“No, no,” Roy says.  “Although if you did, I would hope it would be just here.”  He reaches up and brushes his fingertips over Ed’s lips, which is, as per usual, _fucking unfair_.  “It is only that I… it is… what would you say—moving?  I think it is ‘moving’.  It is moving, or some word like moving, how you are so… how you are about your brother.  It makes me wish I had had a sibling who felt about me the way the pair of you have felt about each other.”

This does not compute.  No one _ever_ … 

Well, Roy said it himself—there are a lot of almost-nevers at play in the universe, and between the two of them, they’ve already thrashed a lot of those.

“I mean,” Ed says, “we also throw things at each other sometimes.  Soft things.  Mostly.  And it’s…” He glances up at the schedule, but the little yellow neon letters still just show the same predicted arrival time.  “I wonder sometimes if things might’ve been different if we hadn’t lost… y’know.  Just about everything.  Just about everything else.  We were always really close as kids, but it… well.  I guess I don’t have to tell you about the way people bond together under trauma.”

“No,” Roy says softly, smiling wryly into the middle distance again for a second.  “But still.  It is… good.  To be seeing.”

“I told him we’re a thing,” Ed says.  “You and me, I mean.  So we’ll see if it stays good, or if he decides he’s gonna kick both our asses the second he gets off that train.”

The wryness wrings itself into something rather more like alarm.  “Is he… he did not sound like he was…” Roy holds a hand up over his head to indicate an approximate height of six feet, and then spreads both hands to indicate bodybuilder-sized shoulders.

“He’s not,” Ed says.  “He’s scrawny and _barely_ any taller than me—” That statement could, under the right circumstances, be classified by dictionary sticklers as a minor exaggeration.  “—and has freckles, and his hair looks like a dandelion when he wakes up.  But that’s why no one expects him to be a natural-born killer when it comes down to it.”

Roy grimaces.  He looks like he’s about to ask a follow-up question, possibly to do with Al’s preferred methods of murder, but Ed turns at a sound that might just be—

A sleek new train pulling towards the station.  Ed traces the track beside them swiftly outward with his eyes, and it _is_ —

There’s a part of him that knows that this is built into his DNA, but there’s also a part of him that’s learned that the good things—the best things—always die.

Maybe the second part is wrong, though, just this once.

He hopes he never loses this.  He hopes it never goes away.  He hopes that every time he even entertains the prospect of seeing Al, his whole chest fills up with warm clouds and filtered sunlight and little zinging bursts of gentle rain.

The sheer excitement of it buoys him through the waiting, and the shifting of his weight, and the desperate quick scan of every shape and every set of features that steps down off the train until he spots the carefully-combed golden fluff and the bright eyes that go with it.

The second Al’s through the turnstile, Ed’s got both arms around him—having, regrettably, collided hard enough that he heard the breath leave Al’s lungs.

Al hugs him back tightly despite the slight wheeze, then pats his head, which has always been and will always be a surefire way to make Ed scramble back and scowl.

“Hi, Brother,” Al says, and the grin soothes it away, because Al is a _cheater_ , and also possibly the equivalent of a telekinetic, but with a psychic capacity to manipulate other people’s emotions instead of objects.

Then Al turns to Roy, and the smile is different.

“Hello, Mr. Mustang,” he says.

“Good afternoon,” Roy says, stepping forward and offering out his hand.  “It is such a pleasure to meet you in person.  Please—you must call me Roy.  The trip was not so bad, I hope?”

“Pleasure’s all mine!” Al chirps.  “And the trip was fine, thank you.”

Ed thinks for a split-second that maybe, because Al already did the shovel speech over the phone, they might be in the clear. 

Then he sees how tight Al grips Roy’s hand to shake it, and then he sees the sheer, pure, Arctic chill in Al’s eyes during one long second of eye contact.

It’s probably a good thing that Roy’s a soldier and has very likely literally stared down gun barrels before, because Ed imagines that this feels an awful lot like that.  At least prior experience won’t hurt.

“Your brother and I were discussing what we might wish to do this afternoon,” Roy says, so gracefully that a passerby wouldn’t have the slightest idea he’s just been silently threatened with fates so dire that Ed doesn’t really want to think about them.  “Are there any, ah… destinations you have not yet seen in Paris that you have hoped to reach while Ed is on his visit?  We thought perhaps first we should seek some gelato, of course, and we discussed briefly traveling to Versailles—”

“I’d love to go to Versailles!” Al says, beaming like a sunspot incarnate.  “I meant to the last time I was up here, but it was pouring rain.  It looks so pretty!  And there’s so much history.  Morbid history is Ed’s favorite anyway.  I guess you figured that part out.”

“Huh,” Ed says, and the war between _Give Al anything and everything he wants all the time and always_ and _Do not under any circumstances remind Al that Roy and I definitely fucked_ twists his stomach up into a knot.  “There are… Well.  There are.  A lot of… beds… at Versailles.  Right?”

Al stares at him for a second.

Then Al stares at him differently as the realization sinks in.

“Oh, my God,” Al says.  “I mean, on the one hand, I’d actually be impressed if you got anywhere good before it turned into an unwanted threesome with a security guard—” Ed, as part of an ongoing quest to scale new heights of conversational dignity, chokes on his own spit.  “—but given how creative the two of you probably are put together, maybe it’s better if _I_ go to Versailles, and you guys wait outside in the gardens or something.  It’ll save us money on tickets, too.  Although I think it bears saying that if you get arrested for public indecency for trying to make use of one of the fountains, there is no way in _heck_ I am gonna pay your bail.”

“Holy shit,” Ed says.  “We’re not gonna fuck in a _fountain_.  How would you even do that?  You’d get weird-ass bruises, and there’d be dirty water everywhere—that’s how you get a fucking infection somewhere you _really_ don’t want one, and—”

Al turns to Roy.

“ _Infections_ ,” Al says, meaningfully.  “In places you _really_ don't want.”

“Ah,” Roy says, blinking.  “That would… that would be very… unfortunate.”

“Al,” Ed says, “if you promise to develop an iota of chill while we’re on the train, we can go to Versailles.  Otherwise, I’m casting a veto.  How’s that?”

“You’re so bossy,” Al says.  “I love you.  How long does it take to get to Versailles?”

  


* * *

  


On the upside, Al relents enough to let Ed and Roy accompany him indoors, even though there are, in fact, a lot of beds.  The chaperone situation seems to be helping both of them to contain themselves, and the glances that Ed catches Roy sneaking at him are much more amused than lascivious, although they _are_ a bit of both.

On the downside, Al only lets them get through about three giant, sprawling, fancily-wallpapered, gilt-bedazzled rooms before he says, “I guess we’re going to have to find someplace to stay pretty soon, aren’t we?”

Ed had been staring at an overwhelmingly gold wall, but he can barely see it now, because apparently the difficulty of trying to separate wanting to spend time with Al and wanting to spend time with Roy and the tantalizing temporary ability to do _both_ has sapped all of the necessary energy from his visual circuitry and left him incapable of focusing.

“Of course,” Roy says, softly and lightly, “you could continue to stay with me.  There is not so much space, but if you both would prefer the bed, I could instead sleep on the couch, and it would be… the hotels—they are expensive, although also many are quite nice.”

In the nick of time, Ed manages to salvage enough intellect from the well of the existential crisis to stop himself from saying _Roy, Al really, really, really can’t sleep in the bed where we fucked last night unless we wash the sheets, like, three times first.  Those are the rules._

Al turns the super-innocent laser eyes on Ed.

“What?” Ed says.  “Why are you looking at me?  It’s your call, kiddo.”  He manages to bite back another witticism—this time, what springs to the tip of his tongue is _I mean, I’ve already demonstrated I’ve got no problem sleeping with this guy_.

Al focuses the adorable impending doom look on Roy instead.  “Are you sure it wouldn’t be any bother?”

“Certainly not,” Roy says.

Ed isn’t about to claim to be clairvoyant, but he definitely sees some hasty laundry in his future.

  


* * *

  


The unreasonably idyllic Parisian vacation continues first, though—Versailles is over-the-top shiny, and so opulent that it seems fundamentally disconnected from any world Ed’s ever lived in.  The Hall of Mirrors makes his head spin—although it also makes for the best photo op of the trip, and magnifies Al’s beaming grin and reflects it back even brighter—and the gardens feel like they go on forever.  If it wasn’t still so damn hot, Ed would want to spend a significant portion of the rest of his life here.  As it is, the fountain thing is starting to sound tempting, although less for sex than just as a desperate bid to lower his body temperature a bit.

Dinner’s great, too—Roy picks out another spot, and Al gets really excited about the menu, and watching the two of them pore over the items together makes Ed’s heart feel so fucking full that he’s no longer sure if he’s hungry.

That’s probably a sign that something’s _seriously_ wrong.

  


* * *

  


“Wait,” Al says as they approach a little pastry shop.  “How much gelato have you had in the three days I haven’t been watching?”

“ _Damn_ , Al,” Ed says.  “Do you know how much this ninja-fitness asshole—” He jerks a thumb at Roy.  “—has been making me walk?  I deserve a whole cake.”

“I suppose it’s the accidental European model of health and rewards,” Al says.  “And I suppose walking isn’t the only form of exercise you’ve been getting either.”

Ed chokes on his spit again.

Roy pats his back gingerly and says, “Perhaps two whole cakes.”

“You’re not helping,” Al says.

  


* * *

  


One _negligibly_ small cake for Ed, a rather substantive éclair for Al later, and another lousy walk later, they wind up back in Roy’s apartment, where Ed immediately scans the bed to try to determine how painfully obvious it is that he and Roy rolled around on it making out for at least twenty minutes this morning.  The interpretation of the rumpled sheets probably depends on the relative filthiness of the observer’s mind, which means… that they’re in deep shit.

Miraculously, although Al’s eyes definitely linger on the state of the bedclothes for a long second, he doesn’t comment—just crosses over to the couch, sits down, pats the cushions on either side of himself, and says, “This is probably better than the mattresses in most of the hotel rooms we can afford.”

“C’mon, Al,” Ed forces out.  “We could get a really nice hotel if you want.  I saved up.  And we haven’t gone to _that_ many museums.”

“You said it was my call,” Al says, darting him an ever-so-slightly-conspiratorial smile.  “This is my call.”  He hops up again.  “Well, I’m pretty beat.  Do either of you mind if I use the bathroom first?”

  


* * *

  


Somehow, a meanderingly long story comes down to Roy and Ed back in Roy’s bed for the third night in a row; and Al on the couch at the foot of it, settling down and making very soft little contented noises.  Ed’s not sure if that’s for his benefit, or because the couch is actually really comfortable.  He didn’t spend enough time trying to sleep on it the first night to make an overall assessment on that metric, or at least not that he remembers.

This is… unreal.  That’s what it is.  He came to the city of Paris with nothing but some baggage—in both senses of the word—and now he has his brother and a hot boyfriend, and his life’s single vacation will go into the history books regardless of what happens after this.  It doesn’t seem possible for the course of his life to change this dramatically in three days—for everything to go this _right_ all at once.

Is he still Edward Elric if all of the personal shit in his life is suddenly, inexplicably great?  Not that Al wasn’t great before, but—is this allowed?  Are they going to arrest him at customs on his way home for violating some fundamental law of the universe that used to quarantine him in something much closer to mediocrity?

It’s not like things were ever _bad_ , obviously, but this—

This feels like a fantasy.  This feels like a _dream_.  This feels like—

“Brother,” Al says.  “You’re thinking so loud that you’re shaking the furniture.”

“I am not,” Ed says, and then he says, “Sorry” anyway.

Roy’s fingertips materialize in the dark to smooth his bangs back off of his forehead, which is unnecessary and wonderful.  “Mm.  I think I am feeling the gears turning.  But that is of course all right.  It is such a fine machine, no?”

“Holy wow, he’s smooth,” Al says.  “Ed, if you don’t talk about it, you’re just gonna lie there thinking through it for another hour, so spit it out.”

Family history of insomnia: one.  Ed: zero.

“It’s embarrassing,” Ed says, but he knows better than to argue with Al at a time like this.  Or at any time, really.  “I just… I was just thinking how… weird it is.  How weird it is to feel this fucking _good_.  Like—I’ve got everything I want right now.  I’ve got stuff I never even would’ve thought to want right now.  I’m not really sure if I’m awake.”

A rustle of fabric presages Al’s hand appearing over the back of the couch, landing on Ed’s ankle, fumbling around on top of the sheet, feeling its way down to his foot, and then squeezing his big toe.

Ed blinks.

“Was that supposed to be your way of pinching me?” he asks.

“I didn’t want to do it very hard,” Al says.  “But I’m pretty sure you’re awake.”

Roy laughs softly.  “If it is a help in some way—I think it is not likely that both of us would dream at once, and I am feeling just the same.”

“Sorry, Roy,” Al says.  “I’m not pinching your toes.  We’re not there yet.”

“I am hurt,” Roy says, “but I understand.”

“Look at it this way,” Al says.  “If you keep treating my brother really well, we might get there pretty soon.”

“I’m right here,” Ed says loudly.

“Of course you are,” Al says.  “That’s the whole point.  I want to make sure you know that he knows that I know that this is very good so far, and it had better stay that way.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Ed says.  “Okay, I’m going to sleep.  Effective immediately.”

“What a good idea!” Al says brightly.  “G’night, Brother!  G’night, Roy!”

Roy pauses for a second and then says, “Goodnight?”

Before Ed can reassure him that Al’s always like this, except when he’s worse, and that it’s probably a really positive sign that he’s already comfortable enough around Roy to be his wonderful ambiguously-evil self, Roy reaches across the mattress again and catches Ed’s hand in his.  Roy knits their fingers together and then draws the tangle up and kisses Ed’s knuckles lingeringly.

“Goodnight, Ed,” he says.

“Um,” Ed manages.  It was already too damn warm in here.  “Yeah.”

Al clears his throat.  “What happened to sleeping?”

Roy lowers their joined hands to the mattress.  This is probably the closest Ed has been to swooning in his life, so maybe it’s a good thing that he’s already lying down.

“Uh,” Ed says.  “I was waiting for you to go to sleep first.  It’s the responsible thing to do as your big brother.”

“Uh huh,” Al says.  “Well, I’m not going to say goodnight again, because that would be silly, so… here’s me, going to sleep, so that you will, too.”

“So noble,” Ed says.

“Hush,” Al says.  “I’m sleeping.”

Ed rolls his eyes, for all the good that will do in the dark; and then Roy squeezes his hand, and Ed can sense that the bastard’s smiling.  How late is it?  It’s going to take him a thousand goddamn years to get to sleep like this; everything’s so perfect that he can’t trust it, and…

“Wait,” he says.  “What time is it?”

“ _Brother_ ,” Al says, but then there’s a sigh, and a shuffle, and the narrow beacon of a phone screen illuminating.  “It’s two minutes to midnight.”

“Shit,” Ed says, scrambling to sit upright to where he can see the Eiffel Tower through the window again.  “Get your ass over here.  You don’t want to miss this.”

Roy’s definitely smiling.  Sleep’s overrated.  Ed never wants this trip to end.

  


* * *

  


It does, though—end.  Like all things do.  Ed just wishes the good things didn’t always have to slip through your fingers fastest.

Roy and Al accompany him all the way to the start of the security line, and the three of them stand there for a series of moderately awkward moments, pretending to be reading the sign about ditching the dangerous items in your carryon while other travelers move past them.

Al takes a deep breath, holds it for a second, forces a smile, and steps forward to wrap both arms around Ed as tightly as possible given the bulkiness of his backpack.

“I’ll be home in another month, okay?” he says.  “That’s practically tomorrow, at this rate.”

“I know,” Ed says while maybe-kinda-sorta clinging to him, because that’s nicer than _Don’t you stand there and try to convince me that you can’t do math_.

Hugs end too, damn it.  Al draws back.  Al’s smile is wobbly, which makes Ed’s chest tighten up, and he turns to Roy in the hopes of at least having something else to focus on so that he won’t get teary in an airport over having to spend another month separated from his grown-ass brother.

“So,” he manages.  “When are you going to come visit?”

“I have been thinking,” Roy says.  One eyebrow arches, and then it’s followed by a slightly softer version of the smirk.  “I am… I still do not have any particular… occupation here.  I am not attached to anything, or to anyone, so very much at this time.  Perhaps I can try to find an occupation near to where you live, and then… well.  It may not be possible.  We shall see.  No?”

“Holy shit,” Ed says.  So much for being nice.  “Are you—you don’t—you should try a visit first.  You might hate California.”

“How could I?” Roy asks.  “It must be magnificent, if it has had any influence on you.”

Ed stares open-mouthed for what feels like a really long time.  All attempts to come up with words to iterate completely fail.

Al doesn’t have quite as much trouble: “I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.”

“You did _not_ ,” Ed chokes out.  “You drama queen.”  He wrangles in a breath, at least, and goes back to eyeing Roy.  “I—still think maybe you should do a vacation first.  Just—come for, like, a week or something.  I’ll show you all of our stupid tourist stuff.  Quid pro quo, right?”

“Mmm,” Roy says.  Fucking _Roy_.  “I think perhaps I should say goodbye so that your brother does not have to have further nausea.”

“Thanks, Roy,” Al says.  “You’re a pal.”

Ed’s heart does a supremely unsettling trembly thing in his chest, but before he can ask if that symptom might need attention, Roy steps forward, raises both hands, and cups them around Ed’s jaw.  Which exacerbates the problem, actually, but in a way that’s dizzyingly sweet—like the first blush of a sunburn after spending too long indoors.  Ed knows it’ll hurt later, but just now—

Roy leans his forehead against Ed’s and opens his eyes just a sliver.

“We will say ‘ _au revoir_ ’,” he says.  “Not ‘goodbye’.  For it is only temporary, until we see each other again.  No?”

“You’re making it worse,” Ed forces out.  It’s the truth.  Roy just seems to drive him to it.

“Forgive me,” Roy says, and the trace of a grin ensures that Ed will, whether he likes it or not.

“Make me,” Ed says anyway.

Roy’s eyes slip shut, and he leans in for the kiss, and Ed can’t help pushing up on his toes to meet it halfway—

Ed makes the conscious choice to refuse to think about the fact that Al is standing about three feet away, forced by the proximity to watch them play tonsil hockey until they either starve or decide to stop.  It’s fine.  Al won’t hold it against him.  To make sure, Ed’s going to buy him something kitty-themed in one of the airport gift shops, or maybe at that kitschy little stationery store at home that he likes.

Besides—it’s worth it.  Because again, _again_ , for the last time for too long, Roy kisses like a freight train to the face; like it’s everything he ever wanted and all that he knows how to do.  Roy kisses deep and desperately; Roy kisses like they’re teetering on the edge of the universe, and it’s the only thing that stands between them and falling.  Roy kisses like the only thing holding him back is the bitter recollection that he wants to remember this later, and for that he has to savor it and take it slow.  Roy kisses like it matters _so_ much.

Ed forgets to breathe towards the end, because he doesn’t want there to _be_ an end, and he’s just trying to drink it in and soak it up and live in it so thoroughly that some part of it will last forever—that some fragment of the sensation will imprint itself into his skin, and he can run his fingers down the marks and _feel_ it any time he likes.

Until they see each other again.

Roy draws back when Ed has to pause to gasp in some air, and then Roy starts stroking his hair back, and he looks so fucking extra-delectable like that that Ed wonders how many minutes he has left before his flight boards.  Surely there’d be time to make extracurricular use of an unlocked storage closet or something; surely—

“Please,” Roy says, “travel very safely.  Send a message when you arrive home.”

“I can’t believe this,” Al says.  “It’s been less than a week, and he’s already stealing all my lines.”

“He steals a lot of things,” Ed says.

Al dives in for the last hug, and then Roy grins and wraps both arms around the pair of them together, and Ed’s being strangled but definitely doesn’t want it to stop.

“Okay,” he manages when his air supply is well and truly running out.  “Okay.  Let go.  I gotta catch my stupid flight.”

Roy kisses his forehead.  Al wrings his hand.

“ _Au_ fucking _revoir_ ,” Ed says.  He squeezes Al’s hand back.  “Love you, kid.”  He reaches up to straighten Roy’s collar, which is ever so slightly off-kilter, probably because Ed was hanging off of it while they made out.  “Stay out of trouble, okay?”

“So long as you do,” Roy says.

“’Bye, Brother,” Al says.  “I love you.  See you soon.”

He has to turn and start walking while he still has it in him, so that’s what he does.

  


* * *

  


No one—not a single person on the planet—should be able to look good after an eleven-hour plane flight.

Hell.  Maybe Ed’s hallucinating.  Maybe the sheer force of his own wishful thinking, combined with the depth of the fantasy and the weight of all the waiting, have conspired to impose a psychologically-generated mirage over Roy’s actual face as the bastard sidles around a woman battling a rolling suitcase with a broken wheel.

It’s been a long and not especially easy five months.  Most days, just the abstract knowledge that Roy gives a shit about the course of Ed’s life has helped—having another lifeline pinning down some of the freewheeling fragments of his disjointed existence; having someone who cares a _lot_ , like Al does, and has never once looked at him like he’d be cute if only he’d shut his mouth for five minutes.  He’s spent more time on Skype in the past half a year than he knew was possible, and the conversations just kept stacking up and folding in on themselves and getting better and better and _better_.

But sometimes conversations weren’t enough.

Sometimes video chat wasn’t; sometimes photos and warmly wistful emails filled with interpretive idioms and little parenthetical notes saying things like _I looked up this word, and it does not sound correct, but if I cannot trust the dictionary, surely society will collapse??_ just couldn’t quite fill the emptiness or dull the cold edge of the silence.  Sometimes Ed just wanted so badly to _touch_ him that the yearning manifested like a physical ache.  Sometimes Roy was sleeping when shit was the worst; sometimes they missed each other altogether when the time zones weren’t playing fair; sometimes it came up in conversation with an acquaintance, and Ed had to produce a picture, and the person would glance at it, do a double-take, and then look up at him like _You really think a guy like that is going to wait five and a half thousand miles away for the likes of_ you _?_

But they made it this far, and Ed can’t help feeling like scrabbling for every second of shared time that they could get set them on an accelerated track towards getting to know each other.  They’d started the damn thing out with an extremely high level of vulnerability and emotional intimacy in the first place, after that first night in Roy’s flat with everything coming _right_ out in the open, and that momentum kept carrying them forward at TGV-worthy speeds.  Sometimes it’s easier to be honest when you’re typing into a message window late at night in a dark room than when you’re looking someone in the eyes.  Sometimes it’s easier to be real when you want to pour _everything_ into the webcam to try to maximize what makes it through.

They’ve built something extraordinary with half a world between them, but _God_ , has Ed missed those fleeting few moments where he could just reach across the mattress instead.

Well—now he can again, for two solid weeks while Roy’s out here over Christmas, which Ed himself has quasi-free of anything except a little bit of grading and a few obligations in lab.  Now he gets Roy to himself, in the flesh, at least for a little while.

Or he would, if people would stop semi-accidentally crashing into Roy so that he’ll catch their shoulders to right them and then make eye contact to apologize.  The first time looked coincidental enough, but the second and the third were less-convincing, and Roy looks slightly dazed after the fourth one.  Now Ed’s going to have to make up some shit about how Americans are naturally clumsy as a result of some vaguely plausible convergence of geography and diet or something.

Roy’s gaze pans over the small crowd milling around the waiting area, and when it catches on Ed, a grin like a fucking sunbeam splits Roy’s face.

That’s not even fair.

Neither is Roy quickening his stride until he’s jogging the last stretch, which compels Ed to run to meet him, which means they collideinto a hug that almost hurts more than it helps.  Roy draws back before Ed’s even gotten a proper cling going, lays both palms against Ed’s cheeks, and immediately starts kissing him so passionately that Ed thinks they might get arrested for disturbing the peace.

It feels so fucking good that he’s not sure he could care less.  Besides, if cops start streaming up the escalator, he and Roy can hold hands and take off running, and it’ll look like something out of a movie.

Roy’s mouth on his feels so much better in real life than calling it up in memory ever did, no matter how many times, now matter how hard Ed concentrated—this is _it_.  This is what it’s about.  This is the kind of moment that so many others add up to.  His brain skitters, and his heart sings, and Roy can’t get enough of him, and he can’t get enough of Roy, and he’s laughing into the kiss out of sheer fucking delight, and it feels like Roy’s just trying to drink his breaths in, and…

When they both run short on air, Roy pauses in massaging Ed’s mouth with his and starts nuzzling at Ed’s hair and face and temples instead—insistently.

“I have been finding,” Roy says, “that I do not very much like being far from you.”

“Yeah?” Ed says with what’s left of his voice.  “I guess that’s good, ’cause I don’t like you being far away either.”

Roy kisses his forehead, and then the bridge of his nose, and Ed keeps trying to find something to hold onto—Roy’s shirt collar isn’t good enough; he wants something _warm_ , something real, something utterly tangible and unmistakably _Roy_.

He ends up slinging both arms around Roy’s neck and threading one hand into Roy’s hair; and Roy keeps stroking his fingertips around the curves of Ed’s ears, and along his jaw, and down his neck; and they’re just standing there, grinning at each other, in a stupid airport for what must be a _long_ time.

“Shit,” Ed manages after a while.  “We’d better go get your bag before somebody steals it.”

“Wait,” Roy says.  He steps back and lays his hands on the lapels of Ed’s leather jacket, which Winry and Al went in on for him together when he got into grad school ‘so that he’d have one nice thing to wear while working himself into an early grave’.  Roy’s hands migrate down the front, fingertips grazing Ed’s chest, and then slide down along his sides to settle on his hips.  “This is… it is even nicer in person than on the screen of the computer.  It suits you very much.”

Ed’s cheeks go hot.  He feels like a kid, and he loves it.

He sets his hands on Roy’s forearms and then runs his palms all the way up.  Roy apparently decided that a fourteen-hour flight was also a perfect time to torment other defenseless passengers, because he’s wearing one of those perfectly-tight button-down shirts, and he rolled the sleeves up to his elbows.  Tracing one’s fingers up along the curves of the muscles is, as expected, utterly sublime.

It is so fucking good to touch him—to have him _here_ ; to look at him and feel the warmth and watch him responding to every single subtle press of fingertips—

“I dunno,” Ed says.  “You look fucking great.  Like that shirt on you.  But it’d look better on the floor.”

Roy’s slow-spreading and unmistakably wicked grin makes Ed’s guts smolder.  “I would say the same of your jacket, I think.”

“Maybe not the airport floor,” Ed says—slightly hastily, maybe, but he honestly wouldn’t put it past Roy to start trying to strip him in the middle of the baggage claim in a hot second.

“Mmm,” Roy says, leaning in to drag his mouth over Ed’s ear.  “And where is dear Alphonse?”

“He’s administering a final right now,” Ed says, despite the fact that his throat is conspicuously dry.  “Dunno exactly how long that’s gonna take.”

“You are right,” Roy says.  He draws back just far enough for Ed to see the smirk unfurling, and not far enough for Ed to be able to dodge a single fraction of its effect.  “We should retrieve my suitcase so that we can leave.  Very fast.  What are the upper limits for the speed on your roads in California?”

In one hand, Ed picks up the duffel bag that Roy dropped when they first crashed together; in the other, he grabs Roy’s hand and starts hauling.  “We’re about to find out.”

  


* * *

  


For everything else that can be said about Al—and there are some things—Ed’s beautiful baby brother is a perfect gentleman.  There is no way in hell that finishing up that final took a full four hours after Roy’s flight was due to arrive; and even then, he knocks very loudly on the door to an apartment that he shares and pays half the rent for before he puts his keys into the lock.

Ed loves him.  And Ed loves lying on the couch in his pajamas with all of Roy’s limbs wrapped around him like he’ll disappear if he’s released, with a big fluffy blanket tossed over the top of the both of them, pretending to have a vague interest in some movie on TV.  And Ed loves breaks, and Christmas, and air travel, and delayed gratification, and sex, and France, and the particular product of all of those things currently curled up all over him and smiling like a contented cat.

“Hi, Brother,” Al says.  The relief flickers across his face for a split-second when he registers that Ed appears to have clothes on under the blanket.  “ _Salut_ , Roy.  How was the flight?”

“I do not remember,” Roy murmurs.  “I am very sorry for taking up all of the… for borrowing the whole of your… would you like—?”

He tries to squirm a little in a way that is probably meant to free up some space for Al to sit on the couch, but Ed doesn’t bother moving, and Roy’s so sleepy that he doesn’t make much progress.

“It’s perfectly all right,” Al says.

“We made stir-fry,” Ed says.  “We left some for you if you haven’t had anything yet, and you’re in the mood for verb-verb.”

“Delicious verb-verb,” Al says, kicking off his shoes.  “Already ate, but thanks.  Anything good on?”

Ed glances in the direction of the TV, which helpfully displays a horrible commercial.  “Definitely not.”

“Cool,” Al says.  He heads over, snags a cushion off of their thrifted-and-then-thoroughly-Febreezed armchair, and plops it and himself down in front of the couch, where Ed can reach out to ruffle his hair.  “You mind if I put Animal Planet on?”

“Go for it,” Ed says.

Al stretches out to grab up the remote.  “I hope there’s cats.”

“Me, too,” Ed says.

“You must forgive me,” Roy mumbles into Ed’s shoulder, “if I sleep.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ed says, carding a few fingers through his hair to try to encourage the ongoing relaxation.  “We’ve got plenty of time.”

“Yes,” Roy says, sounding like he’s teetering on the verge of passing right the fuck out.  “I am happy.”

“Shit,” Ed says, petting his hair a little more.  “Me, too.”


End file.
